Just Not Enough
by mgsylvester
Summary: The five times Steve Rogers was there for Tony Stark, no matter the cost, and the one time he just...wasn't.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hello again! Welcome to "Just Not Enough" my companion fic to "This One's On You." However, you do not have to read "This One's on you" to understand this. **

**But, I would probably recommend that you do, because certain things will be mentioned, but also because I'm actually quite proud of "This One's on You," and I think you should read it because you'd (hopefully) enjoy it. As I've said before, I don't ship Stony romantically, but in the MCU they have such a complex relationship, and I love writing them. That being said, you can see this as however you want it, as pre-slash, as wow-cool-they-hate-each-other-gnarly, or like I do, as pre-bromance sort of thing, because they are brOTP for me, and there are never enough fics like this. **

**Also, I've been a big ball of emotions recently, so you can totally expect this to be as angsty, if not more angsty, than anything I've written before. **

**Disclaimer: The title is from the song "Home" by Micheal Buble, and I suggest you listen to it or look up the lyrics, because to me they just scream STEVE ROGERS. ****But go find the whole song, it's great. Also, I don't own the characters or the song.**

**Rated: T for swears and certain triggers, such as depression and suicidal tendencies, but not as bad of a T as my previous one, because in my headcannon Steve doesn't cuss as much as Tony does, and this is a Steve POV. **

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><p>If there was one thing Steve Rogers knew in this whole entire world, it was that he wished he could still get drunk.<p>

Maybe not _Tony_ drunk, but drunk nonetheless.

It was New Year's Eve, and he'd been officially thawed out for seven months, two weeks, and five days (not that he was counting) and he'd been living at the newly refurbished Stark Tower since Thanksgiving (four weeks, three days. Again, not counting.)

It was midnight in five…four…three…two…one.

And this time, he actually wasn't counting.

He was doing paperwork. The rest of the team had gone out, but Fury wanted the work on his desk Monday morning, and there were easily several hours' worth of incident reports that needed to be filled out. So Steve had volunteered.

It's not like he had any real reason to celebrate the holiday anyway.

Time was an abstract thing to him, nowadays. It passed in decades rather than minutes.

So, there he was, perched at the empty kitchen table, with nothing but the faraway sounds coming from Times Square, the fluttering of paperwork as he flipped pages, the scratch of the pen, and the occasional sound of the whiskey splashing against the sides of the bottle as he took long, slow pulls. No matter how fast he drank, or how much, he still couldn't get drunk. Not even buzzed. His handwriting stayed neat, his thought process rational. The paperwork was filled out to a tee. His mind was not muddled.

He wished it was.

The clock ticked on. Mere hours into this new year, and Steve felt just as pathetic as he did before. The only difference was that now there were 70 years between him and anyone who cared, rather than over six decades.

He took another long sip of the whiskey.

Before he set the bottle down, he looked at the brown liquid in the bottle and felt alone. Maybe that was yet another side-effect of being dead for so long. Maybe that was just something else he'd have to get used to. He found it funny, in that moment, that some people wished for immortality.

He put the bottle down.

Outside, the city flickered with bright, brilliant lights. Everything was bright and flashy and fast, enough so that he couldn't even see the stars anymore. No matter. He hated the stars anyway.

A long time ago, on nights where it was too cold or too terrifying to sleep, in the quiet folds of winter, he and his Commandos would crawl out of stifling tents and across cracked frozen ground, long after everyone but the night guards were asleep. Someone would always have something—a flask, an extra set of rations, a raunchy skin mag all in French—that they'd pass around and shove each other around for. Gruff chuckles were their only music on nights like that, and the only other voices were low sounds of inappropriate jokes or the yearning declarations of homesick men who were pretending that they were not affected by the war around them.

Steve would watch the stars. Around puffs of hot air coming out of newly perfected lungs, he would incline his head and wonder at the cosmos, at the universe he was put into. And he would feel very, very small. Not the kind of small that he used to be, the kind that people like to step on and beat up. But a _big_ kind of small. The kind of small that cannot be remedied by a serum or a uniform or a title.

And by then the flask would have made its rounds, and he would have found it back in his hands. He'd take a pull with a smile, his neck still inclined, until someone would wrestle it out of his hands.

"Wait your turn, Barnes!" Dum Dum, usually, would protest.

"He can't even get drunk. Stuff's wasted on you, isn't it Cap?" Bucky would laugh, and taking the flask to his lips he'd say, "Don't worry, Hat Head, there's enough for you."

"Quit calling me that."

"Make me."

"If you guys don't stop bickering," Steve would butt in now, his eyes still looking at the stars, but his brain resting somewhere far above, "I'm going to drink the whole damn thing."

"Well that's cold."

"Don't tempt me," Steve pulled himself to the present, to his team, back into his own body, "Hat Head."

"Ugh not you too! That was _one time._ You guys are never gonna let Rome go, are you?"

And they laughed and laughed until something about the stars didn't hurt as bad.

Bucky would tip the flask at him, his eyes hinting of old knowledge and understanding, and for half a moment Steve would be big once more. For half a moment, the war and the death and _everything _would fall away, until he was just a man, and they were all just men, forging their way into their futures with nothing but each other.

Now, Steve turned his back on the window. He couldn't see the night, and he couldn't see the celebrating people, but none of it mattered anyway.

"_Cap!" _Steve jumped, very slightly, at the sound of the voice. He heard his name slurred out, drawing it out until it was several syllables log, and knew his team must be back.

"Hi Tony." He didn't turn around. He just continued writing, listening to the scratch of the pen on the paper.

"You missed it!" Tony was giggly, which only meant bad things. "Clint is covered in _glitter_, man. Glitter!" He dissolved into laugher. Drunk laughter. Steve both envied him and pitied him.

Steve turned around, folding his arms, and found Tony to be alone. "Where's everyone else?"

"What?"

Steve shot him a look that he probably wouldn't remember in the morning. "The team, Tony. The Avengers?"

"Oh, right. We all…" Tony hiccupped, "We all made a bet. To see who could get home the fastest." Another hiccup. "Thor's taking the…" suddenly, Tony gasped, and then he was shaking with laughter. He could hardly get the words out. "He's taking the bus. Can you imagine it? All seven feet of Barbie sitting in between some homeless dude and a toothless witch? He's gonna accidentally join a cult. It's fantastic."

"Why didn't he just fly?" Steve inquired, not because he wanted to continue this conversation, because he wanted to prolong the inevitable. If Tony could be this giggly drunk until Steve got him to bed, that would be great. Then Steve might be able to escape unscathed.

"No" Hiccup, "powers."

Steve cocked an eyebrow. "Then how did you beat everyone?" He knew that traffic was hell down there, both by foot and by vehicle. There were a _lot _of people in this new world, and oddly enough they all liked to flock in Times Square to celebrate the passage of time, like losing another year was something to celebrate with smiles and streamers and confetti. Happy _freaking_ New Year.

Tony lifted one finger to his lips. He winked. "Shhh." He hushed, spitting a little. "Don't tell the others."

"I think they're going to find out." Steve replied, rubbing a hand down his face. "What time is it? You're home early."

"It's like three in the morning." Huh. He'd been working for a while, then.

Tony suddenly blinked. "Shouldn't you be asleep? Don't you have stuff to do in the morning, like running all the way to Miami and kissing babies or whatever it is that you do? What are you doing up?"

Steve shrugged. He was tired, but that didn't mean he was going to sleep. He didn't sleep much, not anymore. He gathered up his paperwork, almost all the way done. With the arrival of his team, he'd probably be caught up with cleaning their messes, and wouldn't finish his work tonight.

"Ahh, paperwork." Tony slurred. "You're a great commanding officer, Steve."

Steve froze. Closed his eyes.

Tony was an interesting drunk. He took on different personas depending on who he was with. And his happy persona had already lasted too long.

The thing was, Tony Stark didn't like him. It was pretty obvious. It wasn't hard to see, nor was it hard to understand why. In Tony's eyes, Steve was a relic, a part of his own past that belonged in a museum or in a dusty box. It didn't help that their initial meeting hadn't gone very well, what with the infinity gem influencing them. However, the things that were said couldn't exactly be taken back, because there was something about those words on that helicarrier that made them seem particularly sharp. Steve remembered. Tony did too. And they didn't want to be friends. There was a lot of deep-seated insecurity and long-standing personal problems that backed up Tony's hatred, but the gist of it was that there wasn't going to be an easy way to bridge the gap between the two of them.

Not that Steve really tried very hard. Ok, he _did_, but, well…

He didn't like Stark either. He made a point not to be in his company; being around him was almost like self-imposed suffering, because Steve was guaranteed to get burned. Steve was used to that, being stepped on, but he usually stood up to his bullies. This one was different. So when he was around Tony…?

He didn't know why he was always willing to douse the flames that were Tony's personal demons, because he always walked away hurt, but he did so anyway.

"…a really _great _commanding officer." Tony was saying, and his dulled, thick voice was now colored with sarcasm.

"Alright, Tony, time for bed." Steve replied, beginning to cross the room.

"Is that why you always stand up so straight?" Tony asked in a conspiratorial whisper. "Because that stick is shoved that _far _up your ass?" He laughed at his own joke.

"Uh huh." Steve grunted, rolling his eyes. He was not really in the mood for this.

"No." Tony shook his head, "That's not it." He thought for a few moments. Steve put his hands on his hips. "You've just been fucked over one too many times by…"

Steve cut him off. "Stop." This was neither the first nor the last time he wanted to punch Tony's nose in, but as usual, he didn't let it show. It was easy, this role. He sunk into it almost every day. He was an actor at one point in his life. Before he ever really took up the shield in battle, he only _pretended _to be Captain America. This pretending, this acting, this façade was almost second nature by now.

Tony was still going, "…what was his name? Jimmy? Joney? He had some sort of awful nickname…."

"Tony." Steve said, but it was already too late. Pinpricks, that's what they started as. The memories flooding in were not knives, nor chainsaws. They were pinpricks.

"…or any other of those old assholes my dad used to talk about…"

"That's enough." Cap ordered, and Steve found it much easier to asses this situation as Captain America than to deal with it as Steve Rogers. He sank deeper into the role.

He buried himself in the process.

"Ooh." Tony took a bumbling step and almost fell. "Why hello, Captain." He raised murky brown eyes toward Steve. "I love it when you order me around."

Steve fought away a sigh. _He doesn't mean it. He's just drunk_. He gritted his teeth. _He's hurt. That's it. He's hurt. _Steve, however, wanted to give him a reason to be hurt.

Tony took another step, his hand fluttering awkwardly near his hairline. "Sir yes sir." His mock salute fell flat, and Steve continued to try and remind himself that Tony never meant what he said. That Tony was holding a bomb of emotions 24/7 and he was too much of an idiot to know what to do with them.

Tony took a third step, and the inevitable happened. One knee gave, and one arm swung wide, and Tony was falling. Steve almost let him fall and hit his head (serves him right) but instead he slid underneath him and caught Tony, last minute.

Tony, having already forgotten what he was talking about, let his head loll and his forehead rest against Steve's neck. Steve repositioned him slightly, and began to make the long trek toward the elevator.

He mumbled incoherently, something about _cold _and _muscles_, until about hallway there, Tony started talking to Steve again. "Steve. Steve-o. Steve, my man. When _was _the last time you got laid?" Tony snorted, abruptly. "Never mind. You're still a virgin, aren't you?"

"Is that supposed to be an insult?"

Steve hit the button to summon the elevator.

"Nope, just a fact." Tony mumbled.

"Well, thanks for sharing." Steve replied dryly. His sarcasm had long lost its meaning, and his sardonic sense of humor was left in some trench in France somewhere, across decades of time. He did not joke anymore.

"That's funny." Tony said, even though it really wasn't. Actually, it wasn't funny at all. "You're funny, Cap. You know that? You are just _the best_ commanding officer. You're so bossy and you yell at us all the time. You're like…" Tony's voice got excited. "The dad I never wanted." He added, "Or had, consequently."

"Uh huh." They stepped through the elevator.

"Were you like that, with them?"

"With who?" The elevator doors dinged open and Steve began to lug Tony across the hall and into his bedroom. It wasn't difficult, but there was something about the man that made him heavy.

"Your friends?" Pinpricks, all of them, pinpricks. Bothersome, sure. But not overwhelming, never overwhelming— "D'you wanna know something?"

"Not especially." Steve replied, shouldering his way through the door to Tony's room. He dumped the other man unceremoniously on the bed and crossed the room and into the bathroom.

As he filled up a cup full of water, he heard a nauseous groan of, "I bet it wasn't you that was nice to your friends." Tony began, somewhat incoherently, and Steve emerged from the bathroom with a full glass of water. "I bet it was your friends that made you nice."

Steve didn't gratify this with a response. He was, truthfully, afraid of what he'd say. "Drink." He said, handing the cup over. Tony took it with a grunt and lapped the water up greedily, spilling some down his chin and onto the Egyptian cotton sheets. Numbly, Steve moved to Tony's feet and removed his loafers, letting them fall to the floor beside the bed. Mechanically, he took the cup from Tony and went back to the bathroom to refill it. He was Captain America, and Captain America was strong. Therefore, Tony must not know that his words had a way of finding his cracks and shoving them wide open.

With a bottle of ibuprofen in one hand and another glass of water in the other, Steve returned for the last time to Tony's bed. "Goodnight, Tony." He said, and then set the supplies down by Tony's head. The man looked half-asleep already. He mumbled his reply and Steve turned to leave.

Tonight hadn't exactly been his best night ever.

Steve was hallway through the door when he heard it. "Wait. Steve."

He turned around, his fists clenching and unclenching behind his back. He really really just needed to get out.

"Don't leave me." Tony pleaded, in a manner that Steve was _sure _he'd never use when he was sober. He was cracked and broken, and Steve took a slow breath in. This was the reason he helped Tony. For these moments right there.

People ask where his strength came from. Tony said it came from the bottle, and Steve wasn't so sure anymore. But he did know that it took almost everything that he had to turn around and walk back. He did know that the strength was there. The only problem was whether it was Steve's or the Captain's.

Steve walked back to the bedside table, and Tony's shining eyes followed him as he did so. With calm, careful hands he popped open the bottle of drugs and removed one little orange pill. Steve crouched next to the bed, getting at eye level with Tony. "You see this?" He asked, his voice careful and soft.

Tony's eyebrows creased, but he didn't say anything else.

Cap pinched the pill for a few moments, twirling it between the pads of his fingers. Around and around.

And then he let it drop.

The small pill landed with a clack on the polished wood the table and bounced once, twice, before skidding to a stop.

"You're not falling." Steve whispered simply, his voice low and soothing, never betraying the fact that doing this was _ripping him up_ inside. "You're not in space anymore. You made it through that wormhole. And gravity is keeping you down, Tony. Gravity is keeping you here."

Tony nodded, his face twisting gruesomely. His breath was coming out in short pants and Steve picked up the pill once more. "Again?" Steve asked, because Stark liked evidence. A hypothesis cannot be proven without sufficient data. So, this time, Steve pulled one of Tony's hands closer to him and made sure his palm was flat against the bed.

He held up the pill in front of Tony's eyes and then raised it a little further.

And he dropped it once more.

This time, it dropped straight into the crease of Tony's hand and the man let out one squeak of air through his nose, almost out of relief. Steve looked at him importantly for a millisecond more before closing Tony's flat palm around the pill. Straightening, Steve pushed the blankets further up Stark's trembling torso. "Goodnight, Tony." He replied in a whisper, and he was gratified by the response of only the slowing _inhale _and _exhale _of breath coming from the bed behind him.

Tonight had been fairly quick. Drunk Tony Stark liked to cycle through emotions, using one dry and then tossing it away in favor of a new one. Whenever Pepper wasn't home, it had become Steve's job to pick up the pieces, not because he volunteered, but because the others were fairly oblivious that there were, in fact, pieces to pick _up_. By now Steve knew the cycle.

First Tony was happy. Somewhere between blissfully unaware of his pain and unwilling to accept that he even had the pain, he would joke about glitter and teammates and busses and it would be pleasant, for a while, almost entertaining.

But it did not take much for the anger to filter in, because that was the emotion repressed the most inside Tony's dark mind. He'd always, always bring up Howard, and each time a little more of the world Steve once knew came crashing down. With each reminder that someone he'd known, that he'd _talked _to less than eight months ago was so quickly and so suddenly dead, and each stinging piece of evidence that Howard emerged from that war a very changed man, Steve would lose little bits of himself. And then Tony would start in on Steve himself, and it was like he was alive for his own autopsy. It amazed him, secretly, that a man who grew up with stories about the great Captain America knew how to hurt the man behind the cowl so acutely.

And then, depending on the day and the position of the stars or whatever it was that caused Tony to be so mentally unstable, he had the potential to go in two different directions.

Sappy drunk Tony was probably one of Steve's least favorites. He'd hang over Steve and moan and slur his words about "_I appreciate you so much, Steve_," and "_Jesus, you're way too nice to me._" And his personal favorite, "_I love you sometimes, man." _Steve hated Sappy Tony with everything in his being. Those sentences were obviously all _lies_. Not anywhere close to the truth. Nothing but something to feed Steve's own drive to not give up on Tony, to work with him through his dauntingly large problems, because God only knew who else (other than Pepper) would. And Tony never, _ever_ remembered his words in the morning. He'd wake up, bleary-eyed and hungover without one semblance of a memory of the previous night, because everything that had come out of his mouth had been useless fluff caused by the slight alcohol poisoning.

The second path Tony would take would be the miserable, dark path of self-deprecation and fear, and that was the path that Steve could deal with. For that one, all he had to do was put on the Captain America face and pretend to be strong when he told Stark that the wormhole was closed and that gravity, was indeed, one of those laws of physics that you can't really break.

And, then, once quelled, Tony would become sleepy and drunk and generally want nothing more to do with Steve. So he'd sleep, and wake up in the morning with nothing more than ghosts in the back of his mind. He never remembered nights like these.

Steve always did.

Now, he could not leave that darkened room fast enough, so when he finally got to the lit hallway and slammed the door behind him, he found himself leaning against the wall for support, breathing heavily. His mind skipped over their conversation, into the depths of pain, and what was left made Steve want to have a panic attack of his own.

Tony telling him that he had no respect for his leadership. Tony implying that his relationship with the only person he'd ever considered family was what was causing him to be so rigid, and making _fun _of the fact that he was still mourning Bucky.

Tony talking about his "friends" like he no longer had any.

Like the team was nothing and _he _was nothing and there was absolutely nothing left. Steve could make a scrapbook of _nothings_ and ghost his fingers across forgotten pages. _Look at what I have left_, he'd say, letting hands drift over blank pages and white starchy cardboard.

It might have been true. He might not have anyone at all left in this world, but that fact still hurt. And it hurt a lot. He'd been mourning for seven months, two weeks, six days, and none of it was getting any better. Nothing was making it any easier.

There were seven long decades between him and the life he was supposed to be living. And how do you mourn that?

There was a simple answer.

You don't.

It was never going to get better.

He accepted that fact, because while Tony had cycles of emotions, Steve was nowhere close to drunk, and he never would be again. So Steve had one emotion, only one, because he was too old and too new to this world to let himself feel anything else. He could only accept and move on and pretend, for the sake Captain America, that he was okay.

He would replace that scrapbook full of _nothing_ and paste the pictures of _okay. _ He'd hate himself for it, but at least that was _something_. At least that wasn't blank spaces and empty emotions and complete and utter depression. There was only one thing that he had left, and that was Captain America.

And Captain America was okay.

Alone in that hallway, Steve mused, if he dropped that pill it would just keep falling. And falling. And falling.

Not because there was no gravity. But because there was no bottom to this abyss.

But that was okay.

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><p><strong>So what did you think? Review, if you are inclined to do so, but thank you for reading!<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Again, still not necessary to read "This One's on You", but to those that have, or those that want to, this chapter comes about two weeks after the events of Chapter 4, otherwise known as the Cave Incident.**

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><p>It was summer.<p>

Steve wasn't a big fan of the winter; it had never agreed with his asthma. When the cold made him sick and his mom had to work overtime to keep up with him, or when Bucky would come by with the last of a bland, watery soup and a worried expression, he would feel so pathetic and worn out that he began to loathe the winter.

So when Peggy had suggested summer, he'd agreed immediately. Though the serum made him almost impervious to the cold and had eradicated his asthma, he still had that leftover hatred of the cold, so he was more than fine with the summer.

"What are you thinking about?"

Steve looked down at the woman in his arms with a small smile. "You." He responded, taking another step.

Peggy smiled up at him. "You'd better be." She laughed. He could feel the vibrations of her laughter against his chest, and it struck him deeply. The sound of it was prettier than the music overhead, more perfect than the decorations, and whiter and purer than the dress she was wearing. He loved her in that moment. A lot.

"This is perfect, Peg." He told her. There was a warmth in his chest, because this was everything he'd ever dreamed of and more. She was his whole world, his light and his day, his best friend and his cornerstone. She was and always would be. The best part about it was that she was now his, and he was now hers, and nothing could ever change that.

He ghosted a hand up and down her back, feeling the thin lace and the warmth of the curve of her spine against his calloused fingers, the trickle of hair against his fingertips as he reached her neck, the pressure of his skin on hers.

"Mmm," she agreed, letting her forehead fall against his shoulder. "Do you remember when you proposed?" Her voice was soft underneath the music. Absently, Steve smiled above her head at one of their guest who was looking at them with a goopy smile on their face. Howard, across the room, shot him a thumbs up, and mouthed something like "fondue" at him.

"Yes." Steve responded.

"And what did you say?" Her voice was playful, her accent warm in all the right ways.

Steve spun her across the dance floor, "I told you," he ducked to whisper in her ear, "That we'd won the war together." He murmured, "And that I loved you. And that I could not imagine a future without you." He brushed a kiss across her ear, "And then I got down on one knee and asked if you'd come into the future with me. Just me and you. Like always. I asked you to marry me." The kiss drifted from her ear to the corner of her jaw. He whispered against her skin, which smelled like gunpowder and lavender. "And you said no."

He could hear her smile in her voice, taste her laughter in the air. "I did." She agreed. "But a woman can only resist those blue puppy eyes for so long."

"So here we are."

"And here we are." She paused, "You dance much better than you used to, I'll give you that." Peggy jested.

He stopped, abruptly, pulling her even closer to him. People on the dance floor swirled around them, but they stood in the center together, breathing in tandem. "Will you?" Steve asked.

"Will I what?"

"Come with me."

Peggy smiled at him, white teeth exposed under red, red lips. The world was a whirl of chatter and fluttering clothes around them, but they stood in the center of their own universe. And it was right.

Her left hand drifted across his jaw, and he felt the cool brush of the ring on her finger. "Of course I will, Steve." She said matter-of-factly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I love you."

He led her to begin dancing once more. "Good." His arms tightened around hers. "Good."

"I thought that part was obvious." She whispered, and he chuckled.

She fit perfectly in his arms. The way that they moved and danced and stepped together was like a puzzle, and they fit perfectly together. This, right here, was everything he'd ever wanted.

There was a tap on his shoulder, "May I?" Steve looked up.

"Nope. She's my wife." Steve shrugged, causing both people looking at him to laugh.

"C'mon Cap," Bucky shoved him a little, "I gotta give her the spiel, you know."

"What?"  
>"You know, in case she breaks your heart." Bucky fixed Peggy with a faux glare.<p>

"She won't." She'd never break his heart. "And if she does, I think I can handle myself."

Bucky laughed heartily, his chest shaking. "You always say that, Steve. Careful now, or I'll feel underappreciated." He rolled his eyes. "Besides, just 'cause you're Captain America now doesn't mean you don't need me anymore."

"Actually, he probably needs you more." Peggy shared a devious look with Bucky.

"Please don't gang up on me."

"The great Captain America isn't infallible, you know." Bucky continued, and both of them grinned like Steve hadn't even spoken. "Bucky Barnes, on the other hand…"

"Oh please." Steve rolled his eyes, "I think you're just jealous, Buck."

"Of Peggy? Of course. I would have married you if she hadn't scooped you up first."

Steve sighed, "Alright, you've made your point. You can dance, but Peggy, you can punch him if he acts like a jerk." Peggy smiled slickly at Bucky, who shot a glare at Steve. "I'm going to go talk to Howard." He left a lingering kiss on Peggy's mouth and then, painfully, detached himself from her side. Bucky took her hand and whisked her away, no doubt already talking about how many times he'd picked Steve up from the dirt and about how he didn't want to do it again. But Bucky and Peggy were friends, good friends, so in a few moments, no doubt, they'd be making fun of him.

He smiled.

Steve went to mingle, nodding hello at old war acquaintances and politicians, and then approached the door that he thought he saw Howard disappear through. He pulled it open and stepped through, into the hot, muggy air.

It was dark, pitch dark, and he couldn't see a thing. When he turned around, he couldn't even see the light from the wedding reception anymore.

It was just dark.

Black.

And the muggy humidity was no longer warm but it was still suffocating. Because there was only the darkness.

The dream was over and he still wasn't awake.

"Peggy?" He yelled. "Bucky?"

He clung to their memories, to this moment, because he knew that he'd never get it back.

And there was only the blackness, erasing everything he was and could have been.

He woke up.

And he was lying in bed.

It was like losing them all over again. Someone had ripped him open and played with his insides, and now he wasn't even sure what year it was anymore. Because he was all alone and it was dark and he'd been _married _to Peggy. He knew that she was just a dream, but Steve wasn't sure if _he_ was still alive and who he was and where he was and what he was doing and…and….

And.

He untangled himself from blankets and tried to get out of bed but his feet couldn't support him, and he collapsed in a pile of shaking, trembling cold.

"JARVIS," he gasped, sounding like he was talking around a slit throat. "JARVIS what year is it?"

"It's 2013, Captain." JARVIS said, and Steve barked out a dry sob, though he'd already known the answer.

"Dammit," He cussed, balling his hands into the plush carpet. He felt like someone had cracked his rips open, had pried him apart with bare hands. He felt exposed and open and it _hurt_ and how in God's name was it 2013?! He'd just been with Peggy… he'd been…they'd been…

He pressed his face into the carpet and tried to breathe but he found himself smelling lavender and gunpowder, and feeling Bucky's smile on him, and it didn't work. Nothing ever worked. He was still drowning, unable to breathe.

Steve Rogers had three different kinds of dreams.

The good dreams, the tolerable ones, involved his team, either new or old. They involved fighting and blood and fire, and they were sickeningly terrible, but when he woke up, he knew that they were just dreams. Sometimes he'd dream about the war, and he'd wake up and still smell the rotting flesh of corpses and the rich tang of gunpowder and blood. Sometimes he'd wake up and clutch at his chest, trying to eradicate the anger, looking wildly around for Loki' scepter. Sometimes he'd roll from his bed in a wet, cold sweat and barely make it to the bathroom before the nausea overcame him. But then it would pass, and he would acknowledge that those were just warped memories. He could bury those; it was easy to ignore them, they were so common. Those were the good dreams.

Slightly worse than that were the nights that he didn't dream at all. Because he'd wake up, and it would be exactly like waking up from the ice again. When he took his seventy year nap, there had been no dreams. And now, sometimes, when he woke, he knew he'd been asleep, and he knew that everyone he'd ever loved was dead, and that there would be no one beside him to tell him it was okay, just like there hadn't been the first time.

The third type of dreams were the ones that most people wouldn't call nightmares. They were the happy dreams, the ones in which he had everything he'd ever wanted. He'd wake up breathless and stuck in the dream. He'd forget about the drowning and the cold until they slammed back into him.

These were _worse_ than nightmares.

All those years, all those long months and wasted seconds, everyone he'd known had been living their lives and he'd missed his own. He didn't belong here, in this century. In fact, in this time, he didn't really belong anywhere.

It was unfathomable, this loneliness.

Everyone and everything he'd known were now just memories, ghosts of time. Sometimes when he thought about them, he'd recall them in black and white or sepia. He hated those times, almost as much as he hated the dreams, because to him that wasn't seventy years ago. To him, those aforementioned _memories _occurred a little over a year ago, and they should be _so_ much more than just memories. They should be his whole reality, not something that he could leave in a box and dust off every now and then.

But he'd died. He'd been dead—God, he'd been _frozen_.

Steve clutched harder into the carpet, longing for something tangible under his hands, digging his fingers into the ground like it was the only thing holding him up.

_Inhale_. He told himself. _Exhale. _His mental mantra grew stronger. _You're not drowning_. He took a deep breath of clean oxygen. _You're not in that plane anymore. You survived the ice. They're dead, Steve. But you're still alive. _

He listened hard to the sound of his breathing, just to prove that he still could, but it didn't make him feel any better. _They're not here. But you still are. Just keep breathing. _

He heard sounds, dulled noises, around the gasp of his labored breathing and his ears perked. He listened harder, and found that it was the sound of his TV in the other room. He hadn't left it on. In fact, he hardly ever turned the thing on. So who would be watching his TV at—he checked the clock—three in the morning?

His analytical side kicked in, his thoughts skipping from friendly to foe in half a second, and then to his plan of attack in the next half.

Staggering to his feet, Steve cleansed the feeling of twirling around a dance floor and smiling and laughing from his mind, and picked up his shield from where it leaned against the wall. Then he crept from his room, light on his feet, ignoring the way his hands trembled. He now had a job to do. He now had something else to cling to, so he clung to it with gusto.

There was a shadow silhouetted by the blue light of the television. It was still, unmoving, absorbed in whatever was on the screen. A few more steps brought the TV into view, and he saw that it was the video feed from one of the Avenger's last missions, an infiltration of a terrorist cell that had gone wrong.

He went for the element of surprise. "What's going on here?" He demanded, and the figure on the couch started violently.

"_Jesus_, Cap." That was Tony. Of course. The physical representation of everything that was different about this world was curled up on his couch. He twisted around to glare at Steve. "Make some noise, why don't you?" Tony paused, "What's with the shield?"

Steve swallowed, and looked down at his hands, "I thought…"

"Relax, Cap, I get it." Tony turned around once more. "You thought I was an axe murderer that had somehow broken into the tower just to sit on your couch."

Steve swallowed. He lowered the shield, but unfortunately, now that the fear of an intruder was gone the dream was floating back in.

_In case she breaks your heart_.

_ She won't. _

"What are…" Steve began, but his voice caught. "What are you doing on my floor?"

"Well, technically they're all my floors." Tony said flippantly.

Steve couldn't focus enough to be mad at him, or care enough to try and figure out a response. All he could think about was Bucky and red lips and white dresses and bright, yellow light that stained the dance floor. He wanted it. He _wanted _it.

"By the way, you have a crappy selection of liquors. And by 'crappy' I mean no selection whatsoever."

"I can't get drunk."

Tony just snorted, leaving Steve wondering what Tony had found funny about the statement. "You've said that before. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. But, whatever." Tony lifted up a bottle full of an amber liquid. "I brought my own." Ton continued. "I didn't wake you, did I?" He glanced over his shoulder at Steve's face and then back at the recording on the TV. "Alright. Obviously I didn't." He said, his voice losing the edge of humor for a moment. "Pop-a-squat, Cap." Tony said, shifting his position on the couch.

"What?"

"Come sit down." He revised.

"Why are you watching this?" Steve asked, taking a few steps closer to the couch. There was black-and-white video footage of the inside of the building, and smudges of shadows that Steve could recognize as Captain America and Iron Man. Iron Man's motions were fluid, while Cap, a few feet behind him, looked stiff, like they were in the middle of a verbal fight. Steve paused, trying to read his own lips, not really remembering what he'd been saying.

"It's like a soap opera, isn't it?" Tony noticed Steve's eyes glued to the TV. _What exactly do you think you're doing?_ the version of him on the screen asked.

"Where did you get this?"

Tony shrugged and Steve took a few more steps closer.

Steve sat down next to Tony, and reached toward the coffee table. He picked up a small, silver CD. "Is this the comms recording?" He looked sharply at the man next to him, whose eyes were pasted to the screen. In the corner of his eye on the video, he could see soldiers surrounding the two of them, one of them swinging something hard and heavy at Iron Man, others pointing guns at himself. It was obviously the moment the two of them had been captured. "Tony, what's going on? Why are you on my floor watching this?"

This time when Tony looked at him, Steve could see that his face was pale with exhaustion, his eyes dark with something that looked a little like regret. Steve internally groaned. He really couldn't do this right now.

But he did.

Because the alternative was dealing with his own demons.

"I figured…." Tony began, "That you would, you know, understand."

This was the first time that Tony had spoken to him in two weeks, since the incident. After they'd been rescued and taken back, Tony had refused to even see him. Steve hadn't taken it personally—Tony had said some pretty evil things to him while they had been kidnapped, and Steve didn't want to see him either. But now here he was, sitting on his couch.

"Understand what?" Steve pried.

"That we…I…" Tony grunted, and turned away, flipping the bottle of alcohol to his lips. Steve figured this was as close to an apology that he would get. After all, the whole thing wouldn't have happened if Tony had just followed his orders. If Tony had just waited to go into the building for the team, Tony wouldn't have been put in that cave, and Steve wouldn't have been swallowed once more by the ice water. But that was in the past now, and Steve knew better than anyone that the past would always be unchangeable, a concrete reality that one could never access again.

It was still hard not to blame Tony for it all. It was hard not to recall being unable to move his limbs and watching the cold water slowly lap up his legs and freeze his bones; all the while he was listening to Tony tell him _You're outdated, Cap_ from the other side of the wall. It was hard not to blame Tony. He repressed the emotion, and pretended that he didn't hate Tony for it.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked.

"Not really." Tony took another sip. "What about you?" He offered the bottle to Steve.

Steve, hesitant, accepted it. "Not really." He replied and took a long pull.

Tony laughed, twice. "Well aren't we the perfect pair."

Steve's mouth curved upward for half a moment. He wanted to laugh, but he wasn't really sure if he knew how to anymore. "I wouldn't call it that." He handed the bottle back.

"Yeah, well..." Tony began, and then cut off, and Steve found himself surprised that Tony had come that close to an apology twice in one night. "Just…" Tony started, "Just don't leave, okay?"

Steve looked at him, and he already knew that he wouldn't. Because Tony was broken in a lot of the ways that Steve was, and Steve knew what it was like when you didn't have someone to help heal the wounds with you. "Alright," He said, settling into the couch. "What are we looking for?"

He felt Tony's eyes, but he didn't meet them.

"You know it better than I do." Tony admitted, and Steve still felt his eyes, and still could not meet them.

"What we can do better next time. Team strengths." He paused. "And weaknesses." He said, but he knew that they wouldn't actually talk about the main team weakness, the very fact that Iron Man and Captain America didn't get along.

So they watched. They sat on the couch and watched and listened and talked in low murmurs about how _Widow could have gone here, she'd have been more effective _and _next time Bruce should run point from the Quinjet. _And Steve knew that after tonight Tony would go back to ignoring him and hating him and trying to kick him while he was down. After tonight Tony would go back to walking all over him with sharp cleats and not caring, but for right now, they were equals. For right now, Steve was making a difference and he felt like he mattered. He felt like by ignoring the dream and ignoring his past he wouldn't be able to feel it. Maybe by helping someone else with their problems, he could escape from his own.

Tony handed him the bottle of scotch wordlessly, and he didn't hesitate taking a swig.

In the back of his mind, however, Bucky told him, "_Just 'cause you're Captain America now doesn't mean you don't need me anymore." _He said, "_The great Captain America isn't infallible, you know._"

Steve tried to get over Bucky, and all those other _memories_, but it still was not working. In the back of his mind, in the darkest parts of himself, the pinpricks were rusty nails because when he asked Peggy to _come with me into the future_, she looked at him with tears in her eyes and her voice broke as she told him_ I can't, Steve._

_ I can't._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: CAN I JUST SAY WOW?! I was not expecting that much of a response on the first chapter, but you guys spoil me. So, I'm more than happy to procrastinate exam studying to post quicker. <strong><strong>Also, if you squint hard enough there's legit bromance in this.<strong>****

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**Huskygirl1998: Thank you! As you can see, the events of "This One's On You" will definitely influence what happens in this fic, and I think you'll find a certain part from that fic will have a major influence on this one. (I bet you know which part, lol) However, the actual events won't be in this. It will be a before/after sort of thing. This kinda fills the cracks that the other left. **

**ErinKenobi2893: That's so true. Steve is just afraid of how he'll be received if he admits to it. He doesn't have much left, and the team only works as well as its weakest player. Therefore, he doesn't want to be 'the weakest player' in the hopes that they won't have a reason to kick him out. **

**Hi: Aww thank you :D. But actually I have, like, a billion other things to be doing, I just loooooooove to procrastinate and you guys are super awesome (much cooler than responsibilities) so here we are again. It's a good thing you like angsty bromance, because you're in for a lot of it, lol.**

**AnimeAngel4ever200: True! They're very similar in that respect, so they have the potential to be super best friends, or horrible, horrible enemies. If you've read any of the comics (my experience has been limited) you can see that. In one instance Thor is calling them blood brothers and someone else is calling them best friends, and then, you know, there's the whole Civil War thing...**

**Beakers47: Yeah. My headcannon Steve is very sad, which might not be entirely accurate, but when I first saw the movie and he said "I had a date" at the end i was a gross mess of tears. Whenever I try to put myself into his shoes it never goes well for me, so in my headcannon Steve is also a gross mess, he's just better at covering it up.**

**Qweb: Thank you! I'm such a horrible judge of my work, so I appreciate reviews that tell me whether or not my words illicit emotions. THANKS**

**TheMarvelousDCHobbiteer: Thank you thank you thank you! You make me smile. **

**saillorraven:... what happens on New Years Eve, stays on New Years Eve. But I can totally see Clint covered in glitter. He probably accidentally got hit with one of those glitter grenades someone threw. (I bet it was Natasha)**

**HawkeyeLover: I appreciate you sticking with me! So thank you very much.**

**Iron Robin: THANK YOU! Like I said to Beakers47, Steve feels always make me into a gross, emotional mess, and this is my attempt at well-written Steve Feels, so i guess we'll see where this one goes...**


	3. Chapter 3

"Complete bed rest." The doctor said, flicking concerned eyes up toward Steve's, "I'm sorry, Captain."

Steve gritted his teeth. There was anger, simmering beneath the surface. At Clint _freaking_ Barton who'd gone and gotten himself shot and not told Steve. At himself for not noticing the injury before he'd taken his team into battle.

At the world in general, for never letting up.

"C'mon doc, this is bullshit! I can walk!" Clint protested, but his body said differently. His face was white-gray with sweat, and his hand was almost crushing Natasha's. "Don't you dare let them bench me, Cap." He was now pleading, looking right at Steve. The words hit him like bullets of his own. Clint might not have meant to include the layer of denunciation in his voice, but Steve could sense it. _You got me into this situation_, Clint was saying, _Now get me out_.

"Barton." His own voice came out sharp, not betraying the anger, never conveying what he was feeling. "You heard him."

"But—"

"This isn't up for discussion, Clint." He snapped.

Clint levelled a glare at him.

Steve left the room.

* * *

><p>His life was now a chess game.<p>

And his only use was the player.

It was his job and his job alone to get his pawns into battle and escape unscathed. It was Steve who was to go into battle first and leave the fight last. It was his duty to know the strengths and weaknesses of the intricacies of a strategy. It was his hand that made the moves and his pawns that took the blows.

He'd made a wrong move.

There were twenty casualties. Ten wounded. Ten dead. Split right down the middle, half and half.

Steve, walking numbly on sore legs, breathing through battered lungs, went from Clint's room straight to the gym. He might have bruised a rib somewhere in there. He wasn't sure. Judging from the way it hurt to breathe, he probably did. The blow he'd taken toward the end there hadn't done good things for his leg, either.

It didn't matter much, even after he'd been laying into that punching bag for a few minutes, even after he found out that the rib was most likely much more than bruised. (He sensed a hairline fracture, at best.)

It didn't matter that he hadn't wrapped his hands, so when his knuckles split the blood just flowed freely, down his aching hands. The bag had a reinforced, padded Kevlar-titanium core with little give.

He punched for the cold, for the memories of water swallowing up everything that he was. He punched for the memories of war, for the loss. He punched for the times that he could not punch.

He punched for Agent Daniel Grace and Agent Felicity Kerrigan and for the eight others that he'd lost and couldn't save. He punched for their families, and the media calling the Avengers out for this fatal mistake, and for that bullet that had gone through Clint's thigh on the last mission and hadn't been taken care of well enough. He punched for the bomb and the trap and the fire and the blood.

He punched for Peggy.

He punched for himself.

His fingers broke.

Nothing mattered. Because he was angry, and there, alone in the gym, he was allowed to be angry. Without the prying eyes of the public or the quick glances from his team, he could bleed without showing anyone. He could break without telling.

It was an old habit, he supposed.

_"Hey, guys!" One of them would taunt, and drag him down to the gritty, dirty sidewalk near the corner of the recess ground. "Look what I've got for Show and Tell!"_

_ Another boy, would play along. "Yeah? What is it?" They pulled at his limbs and tugged at his hair, trying to humiliate him, hoping to hurt him even before they started throwing punches. _

_ "It's a _monkey," And_ then the first kick would come, and then the second, and suddenly it would be an entourage of violence and blood and fear, and he'd fight back as well as he could. "Dance for us, Monkey!" They'd tell him. And then they'd laugh and laugh._

_ It was horrible and humiliating and he learned the value of emotions, and how babies are the ones that cry and monkeys are the ones that dance. He learned about pride, and what it was like to have no self-respect. What it was like to look in the mirror and see the bruises. How it felt see what they were talking about when they called him _Nothing_._

_Nevertheless, around contusions and broken bones he'd stand under the weight of his tormentors and show them what it was like to be stood up to. Show them that he was not their monkey, and they couldn't bring his pain to the surface just to laugh at it._

_ But even if he would get them to go away or get them to stop, he was still left with the injuries. He could bleed and find the bandages. He could bruise and cover it up. _

_ So he blinked around bruises and got himself a reputation for punching back._

_ They would not break him._

_ He would not let them. _

"Captain?" JARVIS inquired. _Snap_ went the pinky finger on his left hand, and a hot jet of pain doused his bloodied hand. He recoiled and attacked once more, punching with a closed fist around the three broken fingers of his right hand. That pain was longer, harder. It grounded him. He chose to hold on to it. _Dance for us, monkey. _"Captain Rogers?" JARVIS said again. Over the puff of air from his chest and the ringing sound of the pain in his ears, Steve finally registered that someone was trying to get his attention.

"What is it, JARVIS?"

For a few seconds, he thought JARVIS was checking in because someone had noticed his absence. He hoped that someone had seen what he was doing and cared enough to save him from himself.

But, as seconds always do, they slipped away.

"Captain." He sensed hesitation in JARVIS' voice, and for a moment still did not believe that this AI was not a real man. "It's Mr. Stark. Sir has barred everyone from his lab, including Miss Potts."

Steve grunted and turned back toward the punching bag, feeling the skin writhing over his raw knuckles. Whatever game Tony was playing, Steve was not about to get involved. "And…?" He asked, uncaring.

"And," This hesitation was deeper, different. "Sir is destroying things."

_Dammit, Tony_. Steve let out a long puff of air. "Thanks JARVIS." He said, shaking his head.

Then he looked down at himself, covered in sweat and in obvious pain, and sighed once more.

And then get got to work.

First and foremost, he fit his pinky finger between his teeth and jerked with a sudden snap of his head, popping it back into its socket and thus realigning the bones so it would heal properly. It tasted like blood; his whole hands were covered with the substance, and his knuckles were so split it would take another few minutes to heal. He didn't have minutes, so he grabbed the forgotten wraps for his hands and started winding them around his knuckles, letting the first layers of white soak up the scarlet of his blood, and the second few layers covering up the fact that any of this had ever happened.

He looked for half a moment at the punching bag, dented and battered, but still in useable shape. He looked down at his hands, and then back to the bags, and saw, with a dull sense of realization, that'd he'd still been pulling his punches.

* * *

><p>The first sound that greeted him was a crash-bang chorus that was less of a sound of destruction and more of a cry for help.<p>

He didn't bother to knock, or ask for admittance; he just broke the lock on the door and stepped forward.

Tony didn't notice. It was probably a bad thing, because whenever Steve was on get-Tony-out-of-his-lab duty it was always an immediate _Get out _or _This science is too much for you anyways _or _Jesus, Steve, didn't they have personal boundaries back in the Ice Age? _

Tony wasn't facing Steve. Instead, his back was to him, ducked over a lab table. The parts of him that weren't still in the Iron Man suit—his torso, arms, and head—were covered in sweat and dirt. The lab was littered with papers. A fallen lab bench near the door had thrown blueprints and manila file folders everywhere. They littered the ground like a newspaper collage. The room smelled like chemicals and motor oil.

"What do you want?" Tony asked without turning around, his head still bowed, his voice dark.

Steve fit his hip against the doorway, tucking his throbbing hands out of sight. Coincidentally, this position also took weight off his wounded leg.

"Get out." Tony demanded, but his voice lacked his usual annoyance. His words rang empty, like an eerie lullaby that echoed off the forgotten walls of the chrome lab.

"What's going on, Tony?" Steve's voice came out controlled and it was beautiful and terrible at the same time. _Dance for us, monkey._

"Get out."

"I'm not leaving." Steve insisted, and his breath accidentally caught on the last syllable because something was beginning to heal wrong, and really, fingers were not supposed to hurt that much. He felt them each individually—the throbbing, broken, burning where the bones were shattered the wet and hot and sticky feeling where the blood dripped down them.

This caused Tony to turn around, and Steve straightened. He was unsmiling, his hair a mess, his face pale. His eyes, however, were still sharp, and they fixed Steve with a look meant to skewer.

They reached a stalemate, for a moment, before something nasty twisted in Tony's expression, and something even nastier reached through Steve's chest and yanked at the broken heartstrings inside him.

"They're dead." Tony said. "All ten of them. Just…dead."

"I know." Here was chess game number two of the day, and this time he had only one opponent, and his pawns were words instead of teammates. He still couldn't afford a wrong move. He still had to play the game to the best of his ability.

"They're dead. And I could have—it should have…" And all that nasty suddenly bubbled to the surface, like the inevitable boiling pot that was Tony and Steve. "_You_ should have…you had to…"

Absently, behind his back, Steve took the finger that was healing wrong in one hand and broke it again. _Dance for us, monkey._

"I… I should have stopped it. JARVIS…JARVIS, run the scans again. I need to know…that bomb…those agents…" He babbled, turning back around again. Steve could almost hear his heartbeat from across the room, and he knew that Tony was panicking, that something dark and foreboding and nasty was around the corner.

It always ended up there when it came to Tony Stark.

"Run it again, J." Tony demanded, moving across the room. "We'll see…their lives—they're dead."

"Sir…" JARVIS began, timid, hesitant, like the whole world was teetering on an edge.

And it was.

"_Goddammit_," Tony screeched, and Steve watched as frustrated, desperate anger caused Tony to pick up a piece of glassware—a graduate cylinder—and toss it as hard as he could toward the wall. "Who did this? Whose fault is this?" It shattered into a thousand sparkling pieces.

Tony wasn't talking to JARVIS.

"It was mine."

The truth has a way of dissolving boundaries. It has a way of sitting in the air and oscillating around the room until the whole damn _world _is saturated in it, and you can't ignore it, and you can't win against it. Three words, and Steve admitted to the blood of ten agents, ten of SHIELD's best men and women. All dead because of his actions.

"I want you to get out." Tony was looking at him again, but his face was completely void of emotion. "I've said it once, Steve." Tony said, his voice growing hollower, scarier with each passing breath. "You are a twenty-four year old moron with the leadership skills of an _ape_. And I don't _care _that you'd drown for me, and I don't _care _that you apologized for what you said on the helicarrier. What I _do_ care about are those ten agents that we lost. So I need you to get out."

Steve wasn't going to defend himself, because Tony Stark had a nasty habit of being right about the things that mattered. However, he also wasn't going to leave. Not when the battle wasn't yet over, or when the game was yet to be won.

"Can you hear me? Do you still have ice in your ears? Get the hell out of my lab!"

Steve's eyes flickered briefly to Tony, who was seething and hurt and exposed, and then they drifted out the window. Steve unstuck himself from the doorframe and crossed the room, to look out over the sun-saturated buildings. "I made a decision to put Clint in a place that he could barely handle on his best day. I made the decision to send you and Thor on the perimeter to favor stealth instead of strength. I made a mistake, Tony. And I'm not proud of that decision, but I made it, alright? So I'm not going to leave you, just so you can continue to condemn yourself."

"I'm not—"

Parts of the anger simmered to the surface. "Let me finish." Steve snapped, his voice the Captain's, his words hardened commands. "Look around this place, Tony." Steve turned from the window to gesture at the virtually destroyed lab. "I don't see anything other than guilt." He picked up a dented piece of the Iron Man suit from a nearby lab table. "And it's ill-placed." He examined the piece of metal, averting his eyes from Tony, though, if anything, his voice only grew stronger. "If you're going to blame anyone, then you'd better blame me."

"I do."

"Yeah? So what's all this?" He tossed the dented piece of suit to the ground, where it landed with a hollow thud. "Why won't you talk to Pepper?" His words were growing too harsh, too hard around the edges.

Tony's eyes drifted away. "She doesn't…" He trailed off.

Steve took a breath. "Sit down." He said. Tony stared at him blankly. "Sit _down_." The words became an order and Tony reluctantly sank into a stool near one of the lab tables. "Here's the deal. You're going to go upstairs, you're going to change out of your suit, and you're going to apologize to that woman for scaring her." Steve placed his hands on the table to lean closer. "And you're going to forget about the mess in here, and whatever you were thinking about that made it."

"You can't just do that, Steve." Tony replied, his words not necessarily mean. "You can't just will something away if you don't want to feel it!" He continued. "And who gave _you_ the right to tell me what to do, anyway? I can blame myself if I want to. I can set my fucking lab on fire if I want to. I'm not your pet."

"Yes." Steve seethed, "But you _are_ my teammate. And I asked you once if you'd ever lost a soldier. This is your lesson in losing them."

"I can recall telling you that we weren't soldiers." Still, his words were not mean, his tone not condescending or petulant or purposefully hurtful. Tony was just telling him what he saw was the truth.

Steve took stock of this new-found information and let it fuel his next move across the chessboard.

"Does that matter? Were you the one to make the judgment call?" Steve paused, as if waiting for an answer. Tony said nothing. "Were you the one that sent Clint to his position?" More nothing. "This is how it works, Stark." He said, and a part of him was yelling at him _no no no_ because the word 'Stark' only came out when he was pissed. It carried so much more meaning to him than just the word 'Tony'. He could sense cuss words on the back of his tongue too, which made that same voice try and scream louder, because cuss words were the type that piggybacked their way on the long end of a declining day, the kind you mutter out as you're rolling for cover, the kind that soldiers share when the game is lost. He didn't cuss anymore. That was something that 1943 Steve Rogers used to do. "You blame the one who gave the orders, and not the ones that followed them." This was logic. Cold, hard, logic. His hands began to ache where he was leaning on them. "I screwed up. Not you. So you're going to get your _ass_ out of here, plaster a smile on your face, and forget this ever happened."

"I didn't know you cussed like that." Tony said, trying to make a point, trying to insult him—Steve wasn't sure.

"Yeah? Well, that's not much of a surprise now, is it?" He threw the words around like they were nothing, because they were the truth. But something about them made Tony recoil like Steve had purposefully insulted him.

The silence filtered in, unyielding, and Steve focused on his fingers. He felt them healing, the bones aligning. It was like none of it had ever happened.

But the residual anger told him otherwise. Steve was mad. _So _mad. It was desperate, hot anger at those who looked at him and never _saw_. It was an anger at his stupid alter-ego, who'd forced him into this ideal of perfection. He was mad that Captain America could do no wrong, but if he did, it was really, _really _wrong.

Tony might have hated Captain America, but in that moment, Steve hated him more.

Because he had screwed up. And it was an irrevocable mistake, one that no one could shoulder but himself. But he had to, because Captain America was the best and the brightest, and he couldn't afford to let anyone down by saying that on the inside, Steve Rogers was just as weak as the rest of them. Steve Rogers made a lot of mistakes like that. In all his desperation to be the strongest, the best, to get up after every punch, he'd forgotten about the things that he would leave behind.

And was it worth it?

He didn't know.

He found himself thinking of Bucky. He found himself wondering what his best friend would say, wondering what it would be like if he still had a friend left in this world. And then he laughed, just once, without mirth, because Bucky wouldn't even be his friend at the moment, either. Bucky would stand next to Tony with accusatory eyes and Tony would say _You failed us_ while Bucky would say _You failed us, too_.

And this time he couldn't even defend himself, saying _but I saved them_, because he hadn't saved anyone. Ten people were dead this time. And last time, Bucky was dead….and Dum Dum was dead, and Howard was dead, and _they were all dead_.

In this world, there was nothing but him and the truth.

Tony's eyes flicked to Steve once more, but this time they were different; a clouded brown that carried many emotions or none at all. He gestured toward Steve, his voice different. "What's that?"

Steve followed Tony's eyes, and saw that he'd bled through his wraps. Quickly, slid his hands from the table and out of sight "It's nothing."

Tony's face changed; it grew darker with something like concern, before he began, in an odd voice, "You talk a good game, Cap. But I see right through you." Steve took a step back, confused, and Tony's face quirked into a smile at the knowledge he'd gained the upper hand. "You tell me not to play the blame game, but it looks like you're about to make a competition out of it."

It was Steve's turn to look away. "That's my problem. Not yours" He replied, his voice even. He was surprised that Tony had even cared to notice.

"Oh? Is it now?" Tony's voice rose, like something was funny. "You stupid, sanctimonious hypocrite! You—"

"Listen to me." Steve's words were quick, gritty. "I am in charge of this team. I am the one who fills out the reports, and I am the one who formulates the strategy. I'm the one who is ultimately responsible, and I will take that responsibility. I _regret_ not being able to get those ten people out of there in time, but that was my strategy, and my orders, and so I deserve nothing less than this regret. You, on the other hand, shouldn't. What will it take for you to understand that?"

Tony shook his head angrily, but the anger was no longer at himself, which made that little voice inside Steve that had been screaming at him sigh in relief. So it had worked after all. Granted, this had not been how he'd originally planned it, because Steve Rogers' Cornucopia of Emotions had gotten in the way for a moment there. But Steve knew Tony too well, and knew when he could push the buttons and when he couldn't, so when Tony looked at him with blazing, angry eyes, he knew that he'd succeeded. Maybe he could have done it how he'd originally intended, without feeding on Tony's intense anger at him that seemed to _always _be there as long as he was around, but he was too mad, too hurt, too tired, to really care about it anymore. Making Tony angry at him was always a fall-back fix it for Tony's problems, because the memories would then be stained by anger at Steve and that would lessen the pain. The blame could easily be shifted on the man who both should logically get it, and could prompt an emotional response, like anger, about it. So Steve had pissed Tony off and walked Tony through the steps of blame and then suddenly all blame was off Tony.

And yes, that was pretty screwed up. But Steve knew how to make a sacrifice, and he was more than willing to let go of a friendship that had never even been there in the first place in order to keep his teammate on the right track.

Tony looked down at the scattering of papers and chemicals all over the lab. They stood like that for a long while, angry and hurt and knowing that this was not a healthy relationship for the team, because Tony hated himself and Steve hated himself and they both kind hated each other. But the blame had to fall somewhere, and it was just so much easier if they both blamed Captain America. Steve could handle that. Steve could deal with that. He could take the blame and let it become a part of him, as long as Tony was okay and the team was okay and their dynamics did not change. It worked this way. At least this way Steve could understand the relationships within the team, and try as best as he could not to fail them again.

Tony opened his mouth, as if to break the silence. "What happened to your han—" He began, but was interrupted.

"Tony?" Pepper's voice at the door, scared and incredulous, jerked the two of them from their conversation. "What happened in here?" She stepped over a fallen stack of papers.

Steve, let his eyes slid from Pepper back to Tony, and then he took his leave from the room. His work was done; there was nothing more that he could do.

The next time the two of them would talk, they'd be in California, fighting aliens, and then, of course, fighting each other.

_Dance for us, Monkey._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: It is at this point that I would say to those of you that haven't read This One's On You, that you should probably go read it before I post the next chapter, because the next chapter takes place 5 days after the most major event of This One's On You. So go do it :D! To those of you that have read it, prepare for feels, because I pretty much vomit them all over the damn place in the next chapter. <strong>

**ALSO, about the whole Steve-cussing thing. In that part above, he originally was going to say the F word. But in trying not to make him seem OOC, I kept it relatively PG-13. I just want you to know, that in my headcannon, Steve is both a New Yorker and a soldier, a combination that makes for a dirty mouth, that he, being as emotionally constipated as he is, pretends doesn't exist, as he belives himself to be nothing more than an ideal. Therefore, I shall not be responsible if Emotional Steve Rogers rears his ugly head and spits out a cuss or two in any of the upcoming chapters (*cough cough* the next one)**

**Anyway, I want to wish all of you Happy Holidays!**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**Beakers47: Thank YOU for reading! **

**Your 1 Fan: Oh. My. Gosh. That review was so gosh diggity darn sweet I read it like six times and squealed a little bit, not gonna lie. Every part of it was wonderful and ugh. i don't even have words to express my gratitude for it. I'll just say that I'm glad you like bromance angst, because that is literally %100 of this fic, and also that I'm glad you can see and/or agree with the way that I've portrayed these characters. They're both really broken people, which could be taken and interpreted in a billion different ways. I always make them more emotional than they probably are (especially Steve) buttttttttttttttt oh well. I'm glad you liked it. :DD**

**ErinKenobi2893: I agree with you. Tony doesn't have the greatest people skills, and Cap knows how people work. It's just one of their many differences. AND YES about the PTSD club. That's the reason I love team fics so much. They're all nut cases. It's great.**

**Huskygirl1998: I'm not sure if I'm a Steve and Peggy shipper, tbh. I liked them in the movie, and I saw a lot of potential, but of course they had to RIP THAT AWAY FROM HIM. I guess i just want Steve to be happy. The dream was actually kinda hard to write, because I was putting myself in his shoes and it made me sad. Jeez. i have so many Steve feels. It's terrible**

**sailorraven34: Thank you so much :D And it's never the dreams that are the problem, you know. It's always waking up from them. For Steve, for Tony, for everyone. Dreams vs. reality, man.**

**until i have a name: Alright, I'm going to talk for a really long time here, so you don't really have to read this if you don't want to. You asked about the Winter Soldier. And OMG I actually had a multiple day battle about what the "plus one" part of this would be, because there are literally SO MUCH WINTER SOLDIER feels, and there's so much that could happen there. But I eventually came to the conclusion that Bucky and Steve are a whole nother bundle of feels that I can access at a later date. Especially because I have to factor Tony in there somewhere, and this is a primarily Steve Feels fic with a healthy dose of tony, i didn't know how I was going to do that and actually execute it well. Therefore, I would love to access those feels there, but, unfortunately, this fic will stay as a pre-CATWS fic. Thanks for the review!**

**AnnStormRogers: I feel like Steve always needs a hug. A really long hug.**

**Qweb: They are. I feel like there's so much angst in this :D**

**Iron Robin: Okay, I hate to say this, but if you think the bromance in the last chapter was plain as day, you've probably been reading my stuff for too long, lol. I'd call the last chapter a we-shared-similar-experiences-and-don't-hate-each-other-at-the-moment sort of thing, because it was (obviously) not permanent. HOWEVER, if you were to ask me, in comparison to the last fic, how much bromace is in this one... I would respond with "hella." So buckle up. :D**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Based directly off the events of Chapters 6-9 of This One's On You, which if you haven't read, I recommend you should read to get the full emotional effect. You'll understand it either way, though. :D**

**Disclaimer: The triggers in here are subtle, but probably not as subtle as I think. So be warned. Also, the ideas from _El Dia de los Muertos _are, in fact, true parts of Mexican culture. It's based on ancient legend and Mexican tradition, but the most famous interpretation of it is by Victor Langa, so I'll credit the inspiration to him. **

* * *

><p>It was the first wound he received after the super-soldier serum that hadn't healed.<p>

Five days. It had been five days and he was still bleeding. He felt like he was rotting from the inside out.

When it was an acceptable time to get up in the morning, Steve would rise from a bed that he hadn't slept in and slide off his shirt and see the pulsing, circular wound on his torso and wonder if it was infected, if he was losing too much blood from it. Then he would discard bloodied wrappings and sticky bandages in favor of clean ones and wrap it around himself until it the wound was fully covered. The injury was far past seeking medical attention about, and if he did, it would probably break Tony Stark.

It had been Iron Man, after all, that had given him the injury.

It was a lot easier this way. And why over-complicate things? There were more things that Steve had to worry about. And if Tony knew everything that was going on, he'd spiral, and that was something that no one wanted. The whole team seemed to be holding on by threads, as it was.

It was on the fifth day that a decision was finally made. Not about his injury, as no one knew about that, but about their relationship.

Steve found it funny.

It was always after. It was _after_ Tony shot him in the leg and _after_ he burned him to the bone with his repulsors and _after_ Tony had tried to push him out of a building that people realized that there was something wrong. Though technically Tony had been incapacitated by a personality-changing drug, it had still amplified the emotions within him, and apparently, hatred was a prominent one. That had finally set off the long-awaited red flags, because trying to murder a teammate, drugged or not, was frowned upon.

Imagine that.

So, Steve found that funny. It was always after. In a society that proclaimed itself proactive, nothing could get done _before._ Nothing was ever really prevented; even the things that someone could see coming.

In Steve's mind, time was linear, something that came and came and came and did not stop. And there were certainties on that timeline; he would live, he would breathe, he would make friends, he would lose them, Tony would finally break, he would finally break, he would live, he would breathe, he would die.

And then, just like before, it would repeat.

It was funny.

It was also funny, in a twisted sort of way, that he ever, _ever_ thought a wound he'd gotten would break anyone other than himself.

Regardless, SHIELD sent the two of them a summons, to see one Richard Stevens, PHD. So on the fifth day when Steve emerged at the dawn of another sleepless night, he wrapped the clean bandages around his repulsor burns for a reason. Today was about Tony. Today was not about him. Why would it be? When was it ever?

He buttoned his shirt and tied his shoes and the wound was nothing more than a pinprick.

* * *

><p>"Morning." He said as he padded into the communal kitchen, located on the floor just below his own.<p>

Tony, standing near the toaster, jumped. "Yeah. Hey. Hi." He flashed a quick glance and then went back to staring at the toaster. The man had been walking on eggshells since the incident. He obviously felt awful for what happened, although in all truth, it was hard to hold what happened against him. He hadn't been himself.

However, what was done was done, and there was no changing it.

The toast popped, and Tony jumped once more, and this was very, very unlike him. Usually suave and effortless, Tony was now an obvious bundle of nerves. He was stuttering when he should have been eloquent, sober when he should have been drunk, quiet when he should have been rambling.

Steve snatched one of the two pieces of toast and took a bite out of it. "We're already late." It tasted too dry in his mouth.

Tony just stared at the toast, reaching into the toaster for the second piece. "That was mine."

Steve went through the motions. He smiled because he was expected to. "Like I said, we're already late." He took another bite because he was expected to. "I don't have time for breakfast."

Tony's expression deepened, almost imperceptivity, as Steve turned away. Steve pretended he did not see epiphany in Tony's eyes. There'd been a lot of realization in the past few days, a lot of Tony realizing things about Steve that Steve never thought he would. That should have been a good thing. Steve, however, knew how the timeline worked, and knew they were, as always, destined for a repeat.

He would live, he would breathe, they would fight. He would live. He would breathe. He would die.

It was funny.

* * *

><p>"You know, contrary to popular belief, we're not a married couple." Tony was on the offensive, a stark contrast to how he was before, which left Steve twisted in two very different directions. It was hard to base his reactions off of a man who was so emotionally volatile. It was hard to decide whether to calm him or let him ride it out when Steve was unsure what was actually going on.<p>

"I understand that, Tony—" Dr. Stevens sighed, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses.

"So why the couples' therapy?"

"It's for the good of the nation." With one statement, Steve already disliked him. Everything was always so serious. Everything was for the _good of his country_. For someone else. Everything was sacrifice and blood and pain and _for the good of the nation_.

Instead of making him angry, like it should have, the thought made Steve feel pathetic.

"C'mon, Rich." Dr. Stevens had apparently been assigned as Tony's therapist some time ago, so they knew one another. "You know that's bullshit. I thought we agreed no bullshit."

"Actually, it's a valid point." He straightened, and Steve internally winced, preparing for the speech. "There was a reason you, in your delirious state of mind, singled out Captain Rogers. Probably a major reason. And from that, we can conclude that it's bound to affect the team as a whole, if it hasn't already. You guys are the last defense, and you still can't get along; that only means bad things in the future. What if whatever this thing is gets in the way? Someone is going to end up dead."

"But Cap and I made up. We're cool now. Aren't we, Cap?"

Steve realized a beat too late they were talking to him, "Wh—Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're fine."

"Uh huh." Dr. Stevens said, and suddenly the attention was off Tony and his incessant bitching, and both pairs of eyes were on him. "Captain Rogers, can you tell us what you think of this?"

Okay. Alright.

He could deal with this. The army had told him what to do when he was put on the spot. He'd been captured, interrogated before. It was simple, a few steps, and the integrity of his unit would not be compromised.

"Is this really necessary?" Deflect with a question, stall. "Tony is right. We're fine. It's fine." Play into what they want, but don't hint to what they need. "Maybe he might need individual therapy, but we can—"

"Way to throw me under the bus, Cap." Tony muttered, just as Dr. Stevens jutted in. "Look, I know this is your first time with me, but, Captain Rogers, I conduct my therapy somewhat differently than others do. I call you Steve, and you call me Rich, and together we do not bullshit one another. Do you understand?"

"I—"

"So, Steve, what do you think of your and Tony's relationship?" Dr. Stevens insisted.

Steve paused. Mentally took a step back. Assessed the situation with a rational mind. The mind of a strategist.

That made him feel even more pathetic.

"It's…flawed." He began. "But everything is." Neither of them responded. "We're not friends, but we don't have to be." They were still looking at him; _why_ were they still looking at him?

The only way to get through this was to dust of Captain America and put him on, he realized, because Steve Rogers definitely couldn't do it.

If he told them that Tony had held him off the ledge of a building and threatened to drop him into the cold unknown, had he told them that was _literally_ the one thing both Steve and Cap were afraid of, had he mentioned the injury, or the fact that he couldn't sleep because his subconscious mind was either stuck in nightmare or trapped in the void, it would be the end of it all.

If he told them that everything that Tony had ever said to him was working its way back into his mind, if he told them that he was _still_ angry at the things that Tony had said in San Diego, that he was even angrier at the things that had been said before then, that would be the end of himself.

If he told Tony about the burn still on his chest, about the fact that he was avoiding the common room religiously now, about how food had lost its taste and his appetite was close to zero, that would be the end of Tony.

It would be the end.

So as their leader, and a man who had been through one too many changes in his admittedly short (long?) life, he wasn't willing to let that happen. He could work it out on his own; he always could. Besides, the team didn't need any more stress; they'd all been through enough.

Now it was Cap's turn to speak, where it had previously been Dr. Stevens'. Cap made Steve feel comfortable, like the eyes on him were just one of the many. Cap was the only part of him that he could rely on for strength, and that was the most comforting thing he'd ever known. "Look, Dr. Stevens…"

"Rich."

"…while I understand what you're trying to do here, I have to disagree. Neither of us are petty enough to let our differences interfere with our work. We serve a greater purpose than that." He said, because hadn't that been why they'd been through this whole thing? Because Tony couldn't seem himself as a hero? "We're here for today because Fury ordered it, but I don't believe that this needs to be a common occurrence."

Dr. Stevens sighed and tipped backward in his seat. "If that's how you feel, I won't disagree." He said politely.

"Thank you."

There was a beat of something that was not quite awkwardness, and then they were moving on.

"So, while we're here, let's talk about the incident, then, shall we?" Dr. Stevens glanced from Tony to Steve. "I think we all know how Tony feels about it." He said. "So, Steve, why don't we start with you?"

And the eyes were on him again.

Like they actually expected to respond.

"Pardon?" He asked calmly, even though he could feel his heartbeat in his chest.

"What was going through your head?" The eyes were boring into him. They were hot, searing, horrible things, and he wasn't meeting any of them.

"I don't—Look, isn't this about Tony?" He was floundering and desperately trying not to. Wasn't today about Tony? Wasn't it about the 'good of the nation' or whatever? This was not what he expected at all.

"It's alright, Steve. We're all friends here."

They looked at him.

He swallowed.

What was going through his head? When he was hanging out of that building, what was he feeling? It wasn't a fear of death. It wasn't desperation for life. It was an emotion that Steve didn't have a name for, and it scared him. It _terrified_ him. The way that he felt when the wind beat at his back and his foot slipped backwards into the void. The way that something in his stomach dropped when Tony caught him. How difficult it was for him to get up off the glass-covered ground after he'd been shot in the leg. What was he thinking? What was that feeling?

It scared him how numb he'd become.

So, for the first time in a long time Captain America left him.

Maybe because Captain America knew how unhealthy this was. Maybe because Steve, somewhere deep down, wanted to be saved.

Because Steve had not been to sleep since he'd been in Prague, nine days ago. He had not had anything legitimate to eat since he'd been scarfing a last-minute inflight meal on the Quinjet in a hurry to get back to New York.

Because Steve could pull of his shirt and show them the charred bone of his sternum. He could tell them about the wound, how it both worried him that it wasn't healing, and at the same time made him wish it never would.

Because he had been giving and _giving_ and everyone just kept _taking._ He was not an unlimited, renewable resource. His strength was waning.

And he found that his world as he knew it was about to come unraveled at the seams and he couldn't bring himself to care. They were going to get a look behind the mask, and he knew it would be ugly, and he wasn't sure whether to be happy that perhaps someone would care, or be terrified that perhaps they wouldn't.

He swallowed, shifted on the couch, and rolled steel eyes to look at Dr. Stevens in the eyes. "I had a friend once." He said, his voice changing as he accepted what was happening. "And he hung off the side of a drop." The atmosphere stilled around him. "I let go of him." No one was breathing. "And he didn't live."

Steve stood up.

He left.

* * *

><p>"Steve!" A voice chased him down the hall. Expensive shoes echoed behind it. "Steve!"<p>

He kept walking. He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it he couldn't—

"Steve!"

Steve whirled. _"What?"_

"What the hell was that?" Tony demanded, slowing to a stop a few feet away. "Was that…were you talking about…?" _…Jimmy….Joney… he had some sort of awful nickname…_ "Bucky?"

Steve didn't have a response.

Tony's eyes widened, something like realization filtering it. His voice dropped, incredulous. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What didn't I tell you?" Steve's own voice came out high. "Why do you think I didn't tell you?"

"I—"

"Because it _hurts,_ Tony." Now that he'd started he couldn't stop. The bandage was off and the blood was flowing. "Because everything I give you is just ammunition you can use against me. And I don't know if you know this, Tony, but you're not the only person in this world who can feel pain."

Steve could see how Tony was crumbling under the weight of the past, but Steve was already far past decimated. He'd been crushed a long time ago.

"You held me out of a window and asked me to fight you and I said no." His hands began to tremble. "I trusted you to not let go of me and you did." Maybe that was a low blow, but both Steve and Tony knew they weren't really talking about just the events of the tower. It wasn't just that. "We're not friends, Tony." Something like hurt flashed through Tony's eyes, but Steve didn't have any idea why. "I'm your bandage. My only use is to sober you up and send you back to Pepper." His voice was surprisingly dull. "But you need me. So I'm not going to stop helping you. I'll be there for you when you need me to, Tony."

Steve closed his eyes.

And Bucky was there to greet him, a warm hand on his shoulder, his voice ghosting over the words _I'm with you 'till the end of the line_. Because Bucky had been that kind of friend to him. Because Bucky had given and given and all Steve had done was take from him. Steve had expected him to pick him up out of the dirt after he'd been beaten up. Steve had convinced Bucky to be a Howling Commando for him. Steve had handed him an attachment to that zip line and expected Bucky to follow him on that train. And Bucky was with him. Bucky was _always_ with him.

Until he wasn't.

Bucky trusted him to not let go and he did.

He knew what it felt like to be on the other side of that now.

"I'm not giving up on you." He managed. "But we're not friends, okay?" It hurt too much. "It's too much—I can't…you won't…" _You'll drop me again._

"Steve?" Tony was trying to seep under his eyelids and crack his eyes open, tried to crack all of him open, like Steve was a walnut and underneath his hard exterior there was something more.

His eyes flew open at the word. "Stop it, Tony. Fuck, just stop."

"What? Stop what, Steve?"

"Stop calling me that."

There was silence.

"Wh—St—Cap, that's you're…" Tony looked devastated. Confused. He stuttered over his words. "But you're Steve Rogers?"

Steve let out one puff of air, a laugh without pleasure. "Steve Rogers never made it out of that ice, Tony." His voice was strong in all the ways he wanted it to be, but for some reason it had the opposite effect. It made him seem weak. He didn't realize how wounded he'd sound until it was too late to take them back.

His voice echoed in the empty hallway. Everything echoed when life was carved out.

He didn't realize how true it was until he spoke the words.

Steve Rogers never made it out of the ice.

Couldn't they see that? He was always, always the Captain around them. And there was a reason for that. Of course there was. Steve Rogers didn't mean anything to this bright new world. Steve Rogers didn't belong in this reality. Steve Rogers was the part that died when he should've died. He was the kid who died all those years ago when it was right, when it was natural. He was the soldier who died when his death still meant something. The man who died when his _life_ still meant something. And now the only thing was left was the ghost of him, trapped, _screaming,_ hoping to either be absolved or let go.

Tony opened his mouth. Closed it again. "Don't tell me that. Please don't tell me that." His voice grew, pleading, wavering.

The Mexicans have a belief that you do not die one death.

You die three.

The first death is when the body ceases to function, when the heart stops and the blood isn't warm. It's when eyes glaze over and brains stop telling limbs what to do.

It's when there's too much ice in your lungs so you can't draw in another breath and the cold makes your organs stutter to a stop.

The first death, they say, is when your gaze doesn't carry meaning, and the space that you occupy becomes empty because you aren't occupying it anymore.

That death, for Cap, was neither quick nor painless. It was terror with no release. He watched it come at him in slow motion. The wind was still in his ears and promises bound to be broken were drifting from his lips as it came. Even as the plane hit the water, he watched his death; listening to the pop of the metal as it crumpled from impact, taking one last burning breath before the oxygen was gone. Drowning was not a peaceful way to die.

Steve's first death was slow.

"I'm sorry, Tony." Steve replied, and he honestly was. He was sorry for a lot of things.

His voice lost its strength. The trembling in his hands moved up his body and into his vocal chords. "Let me be there for you. But don't try to be there for me." Not when there was nothing to be there for. "It'll break the both of us."

The second death, according to the Mexicans, is when the body is lowered into the ground. When the corpse returns to dust and dirt, when the grave swallows up around you, when a body lies in a place where no one can see. That's the second death.

Ashes to ashes, as they say.

When the plane settles, when the water washes in and out with the ebb and flow of the tide, and the ice floats on, above you, you've died twice. When friends look for you but never find you, when life begins to gradually carry on, when time continues to pass, the second death, in turn, slips away.

That death was quiet. It lacked the terror of the first death, the raw panic of the drowning. Being dead was easy. Being buried was easy. It had been seventy years of _easy._

"Is this…" Tony started, stopped, and started again. "Is this new?" His voice carried more doubt, like he was blaming himself.

Steve shook his head. He couldn't let Tony blame himself for something this big. Something that had stretched across time and into the barriers of ice around his heart. It was never Tony's fault; Tony had just made it worse. "Did I…?"

"No, Tony. It was never you." Steve's sentences were clipped, as he was desperately searching for his pride once more, trying to pick himself up and dust off the pieces. He, once again, tried to tug the cowl on over his emotions, but they were too big and too open to be tucked back together again. He had let his vulnerabilities out and they were bleeding from him. "Look, just—please… just go away. I need you to go away."

"Cap, I'm not…"

"Tony, I'm asking you to _please_ leave me alone." He could sense it coming, the shortness of breath, the memories beating him up just to pick him up and start again. The echoes of dreams and the screams of ghosts. It had been a while.

"Steve, I'm not leaving." Tony started. "A wound like this just festers." He said earnestly. "You can't just pretend these feelings don't exist. You can't… this isn't coping, Steve." There was more of that revelation in Tony's eyes, and Steve wanted nothing more than to hide from it. "You're not coping. Jesus, this is...you're…" Tony searched his face. For one long painstaking moment, his eyes were probing him, analytical, as if asking a question that Steve didn't want to answer. After a moment, Tony's eyes widened, his lips popping open. He looked down, swearing. "How long?"

Steve knew what he was talking about but he didn't respond.

"How long have you been thinking this way, Steve?"

He didn't respond again, because if he did he'd probably end up saying he'd been considering it since Fury told him _You've been asleep, Cap_. If he opened his mouth now he knew that he wouldn't be able to say anything but the truth. That he'd been thinking this way since the moment he realized there was only one way back to them.

"Tell me something, Steve." Tony started, his tone odd in a way that Steve couldn't pinpoint. "Underneath all this self-sacrificing bullshit, what's the difference between martyrdom and murder?"

"What are you—"

"I'm _asking_ you," The odd tone of voice grew thicker, more urgent. "When you make the sacrifice play, what's on your mind—who might live or who might die?"

Steve got what he was implying. And he couldn't bring himself to answer.

He'd lied enough for one day.

If Steve was being honest, which, when it came to himself, he rarely was, he would tell Tony that he'd pretended to be numb for so long that he was starting to believe it for himself. He would tell him that the rock in his stomach was either going to rip its way, bloody, out of him, or find a way to end him.

He wanted to tell. He wanted to bleed out his insecurities until he was dry, but he knew he never could. He couldn't admit to it, couldn't let the words leave his lips—_I'm not okay_ —because then everything he'd been building for himself in this shiny new world would be ripped apart. He had one thing left, and that was his team. They'd take them from him. They'd take all of it from him

He would rather be empty for the rest of his life than lose his team again.

"I'm worried about you." Tony said thickly.

"I can't look at you right now." Steve responded quickly. He flicked his eyes up to Tony, and fixed his face, clenching his jaw. "I can't be around you right now." He said, and comprehension flickered across Tony's face as the color faded out of it. And maybe, again, it was a low blow, and maybe Steve shouldn't have stepped through that line, but he needed Tony to leave so that when he shattered Tony wouldn't be caught in the shrapnel. He couldn't let Cap's image be tainted by the wounds he carried beneath the uniform. It would end his whole world if they found out.

Maybe that was selfish.

But he knew what it was like to lose his whole world and he wasn't going to go through it again.

"Alright." Tony croaked. "I understand."

Tony hesitated, lifting an arm a little. For a moment, Steve thought he was going to stay, and he knew that if he did, Steve would hurt him more than he already had. Steve couldn't afford that, no matter how much he wanted it. He wouldn't be the nuclear bomb that took everyone else out. If he was going to explode, the only person going down would be himself. Not Tony. Not his team. Just him. He just couldn't let them see. It was for their own good. The media called Steve the cornerstone of the Avengers, and if Steve were to dissolve like he wanted to, he knew there would be consequences.

Tony looked at him, the color still fading out of his face, and his fingers clenched into a fist. The arm that was reaching out dropped to his side. His face hardened. His lips tipped downward.

Tony turned on his heel and didn't look back.

Alone, Steve stepped backward until his back hit the wall, and let his legs slide out from underneath him. He tipped his head upward, trying to breathe.

As Tony's footsteps disappeared down the hall, Steve finally let the memories take him.

There was no one left to fight them away anymore. It was only him facing down the ghosts of the past while Cap fought the demons of the future. But at night when they both combined into one, he was only one man. Not both.

Just one.

So, the third death was the one that truly hurt. It was unredeemed agony. It was finger breaking and long nights against a punching bag and putting bandages around lies and pretending to go through the motions. It was convincing Tony that he _isn't falling_, while, at the same time, being unable to convince himself that _they're dead, Steve, but you're still alive._

The third death is definite.

The third death Steve died every day.

The third death, they say, is the death that matters. It's the one that means you're _dead,_ the one in which you never come back from. Steve Rogers hadn't come back from it, while Captain America barely did.

The third death occurs when there is no one left to remember you.

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><p><strong>AN: This chapter ended up very far from where I originally intended it to go. The next one won't be as heavy, I promise. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed!<strong>

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**SilentSoliders: Thank you for reading! I just have so many Steve feels, it's ridiculous. **

**saillorraven34 and Qweb: I'm adressing this one to you both because you both commented about the breaking fingers, and there's a long explanation to that one. I saw this tumblr post once that was about in CATWS when Zola tells him "You're death amounts to the same as your life-nothing" (or something along those lines) and Steve punched out the computer with his bare hand, full strength, when he could have kicked it or hit it with his shield, at the very least, let alone restrained himself. And man, that really got to me. It's like he needs to feel the physical pain in order to rationalize the emotional pain, like he's not allowed to feel emotional pain, but, to him, it's a little more acceptable to be physically hurt. This whole fic is exploring the different things that Steve uses to try and ignore how broken he really is, and by this form of self-harm, he's definitely finding a way to ignore it. I also included the rebreaking of fingers to try and illustrate the whole covering-up-his-wounds thing, because he's talking Tony off a ledge, while at the same time, behind his back, he's breaking his own bones and refusing to show it. **

**TheShadowKeeper: Ugh. So much tension. Soooo much angst :D And to answer your question, you can just go ahead and assume that Steve has a base knowledge of Tony's demons, enough so that he feels this urge to save him from them. **

**Huskygirl1998: I feel like when he's comfortable, those little traits of him come out. Like the cussing. Like in the movie, during the final battle, he tells Thor to 'light the bastards up' because he feels comfortable with what he's doing. But when he's not in a familair situation, like battle, those aspects of his personality just...don't exist anymore. In chapters to come, I explore a little bit of that in regards to his humor. Anyway, thanks for the review!**

**Your #1 Fan: Dude. Thank you so much for that review, it was very, very kind and generous and I probably don't deserve it but THANK YOU. Anyway, I'll respond to your nine parts with my own nine parts :D 1)One of my original plot bunnies for This One's on You, actually, was "Steve beats Tony at chess. Tony gets mad." It didn't make the cut for _obvious _reasons, but I still liked the idea of chess. It's a strategy game, and I wanted to explore Steve-as-a-leader in the last chapter. 2) Oh man, that quote gave me feels. Ugh. But, as to the whole emotion vs physical 'bleeding', you can see what i said to sailorraven34 and Qweb :D 3) Similar to what I said to Huskygirl1998, Steve only lets himself be himself when he's comfortable or cannot control himself. I think the most devastating part of Steve Rogers is that he feels like he doesn't exist expect for the rare times when he's alone with himself. 4)I've been trying to portray Cap as one of Steve's escapes from his own realities, and because of that I think it's created a little bit of a multiple-personality problem. I think that, however, Steve knows he is only one man, he just puts on different personas. In the end, he's only questioning which one is the bigger lie. 5) Even though I've said he can only be himself when he's alone, at the same time, he still refuses to break. And while he's this superhero with super muscles, he still won't allow himself to break, no matter what. 6)OMG. The whole "just because the serum made your shoulders bigger doesn't mean you can carry the word" was perfect. Can I paraphrase you? That was complete gold, I love it. 7) I think that a really, really important part of all this is that Steve _knows_ how Tony feels about him, and he thinks that they'll never be friends, but he won't give up. That's just who he is. 8)This one I'm going to say very little about, apart from the fact that it will be answered later on, and I don't want to spoil anything. 9) I've read fics where Steve and tony are fighting and Clint or someone says, "Oh great, Mom and Dad are fighting again," and while sort of odd, i feel like that's weirdly accurate. because in all realities, what they do affects the team a whole, and this unhealthy relationship will effect them, as well. **

**Iron**** Robin: yes! There's so much bromance it's sickening. (Okay...that might have been a lie, but in comparison to anything else I've written it's-sadly-very true) **

**Beakers47: Thank you for the review! I appreciate it a lot. **

**ErinKenobi2893: OMG i liked that story idea a lot. You definitely should do it. **

**MP3: Thank you so much for the sweet review! **

**BandGeekDrummer: *blushes* Thank you thank you thank you! You are too nice to me :D**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: References to Chapter 5 and 6 of "This One's on You"**

**there was about %150 less angst in the first draft of this chapter jeez oh man I can't control myself. **

* * *

><p>"<em>Do you want to kill Nazis?"<em>

_The silence was heavy. "Is this a test?"_

"_Yes."_

_He thought for a moment._

"_I don't wanna kill anyone." He said._

* * *

><p>"Scotch and Soda, " Tony said, tapping his fingers against the bar. The sound of his fingers against the glass counter was swallowed up by the scraping of metal against ice and the sharp peals of laughter coming from the busty lady to his right.<p>

From behind him, Steve put in. "Make that two, please." His words were carried over the din of a large crowd and the quiet sounds of a quartet, playing something, as it seemed, by Brahms. Around him, people danced and talked and smiled, swishing with diamonds and gold cufflinks. Everything here was expensive and odd and smelled like Chanel no. 4.

Tony jerked around, obviously startled. "Steve?" His voice was not warm, which was unsurprising. They had not parted on good terms. "What are you doing here?"

Steve, for a moment, felt self-conscious in his suit, felt that the blue tie was too suffocating; the crisp white shirt was too clean. "I got an invitation." He wondered if they should have sent Natasha instead.

"By who?" Tony asked, his voice still not warm. The busty lady started laughing again. The viola crescendoed across the ballroom.

"Pepper." Steve replied oh-so-casually, pushing one fresh tumbler toward Tony and taking the other for himself.

"Huh." Tony asked, his eyes finding Pepper, who was schmoozing across the room, wearing a maroon dress. She smiled, putting a hand on a man's arm who looked to be in his mid-90s and Japanese. As if feeling their eyes on her, she turned, her smile widening at the sight of Tony. She saw Steve next to him, and her face tightened almost imperceptibly. She turned back to the elderly Japanese man with stiff shoulders."Why?"

Steve shrugged, hoping to put off an aura of nonchalance. "She said you'd need someone to keep you in line while she was off doing CEO stuff." He took a sip, grateful that the bartender was a little light on the soda. "I think somewhere along the line she said the word 'babysit'"

"And why did you agree?"

"I've seen what you can do when you get bored at parties, Tony."

Tony snorted into his glass as he took a sip, his eyes never leaving Pepper's form. "Can I ask you something?" Steve was surprised that Tony hadn't let the silence fall into awkwardness.

"I can't stop you."

"Why is it," Tony started, like Steve hadn't said anything. His eyes drifted from Pepper and up into Steve's, "that whenever we're together, we're either drinking or fighting?"

This time the awkwardness did fall, because they were both thinking about the last time they talked, about the last words exchanged between the two of them. _I'm worried about you. _That had been about a week ago. Since then, Steve had told himself that he'd come too close to the edge and had forced himself away from it. The wound on his chest had healed, but that didn't mean he didn't carry it anymore. He was used to it; the fact that his scars were never carried on his skin.

Steve wondered if he made a mistake in pushing Tony away, if somehow letting himself what was beneath the surface would help them both. He wondered if his assumption that his downfall would be Tony's was too callous, too arrogant. Regardless, he still stuck by his decision. They couldn't let what happened in that tower hurt them more than it already had.

He cleared his throat, trying to break up the awkward silence. He wasn't willing to get into this now. Or ever, for that matter.

"It probably means that we should stop drinking." Steve replied, draining the rest of his drink. "Alcoholism is a problem, you know."

Tony looked at him, trying to decipher meaning from his statement as the room held its breath. A smile slowly spread through his face as he finally understood.

Steve was making a joke.

Tony started to laugh, and they both knew it was an apology.

* * *

><p>"So Pepper invited you, huh?"<p>

"Something like that." They had moved to a table, having found the bar too crowded. Both of them were sitting with chairs turned, eyes on the crowd. Tony, because he would much rather people-watch than actually be a part of the party, and Steve for admittedly much different reasons.

Steve itched the back of his neck, feeling sweaty and awkward and wanting, not for the first time tonight, to get the hell out of there. He also wanted to drain this second drink and go for a third; but for one, that did not mean Tony would leave him alone, and for another, it would do more harm than good.

"I didn't know you two knew each other that well."

Steve shrugged. "We sometimes share a common job." He replied.

Again, it took Tony several moments, but, in the corner of his eye, Steve saw Tony smile. "Is that another joke, Captain? Are you drunk? Sick, maybe?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "The liquor's not that strong."

"Well, then, you're acting weird."

Steve smiled, conscious that it was pinched, but trying to maintain his cover. There were a lot of reasons that he would be "acting weird," but Tony probably didn't know the real one.

Before Steve could lie any more, a voice in his ear told him, "_Your four o'clock, Cap." _

"So where's everyone else tonight?" Tony inquired, and something inside Steve sighed in relief, like it always did, when an act worked.

"_Three o'clock."_

Steve glanced casually to his right, "I think Thor and Bruce went to dinner. Thor wanted to try Naan and Bruce is an expert on Indian food."

"And the spies?"

"_Two o'clock, Cap, and moving toward the door."_

"Not sure." Steve had located the target. He was tall, dark man who was leaning casually against the pillar near the door. His face was clouded, angry, his eyes so brown they were almost black. The man, who was called Sturgess, hadn't yet spotted Steve or Tony. This was a good thing; it gave Steve time to figure out how he was going to go about doing this mission. "I think Fury called them in last minute."

Tony nodded, processing the information as he took another sip of his drink.

Steve was getting restless, his eyes drifting away from Sturgess just to shoot back to him, like he was a proverbial shadow that loomed in his peripheral vision. It was time, he supposed, to get this show on the road. "Look, Tony, can we talk?"

Tony didn't look at him. "Isn't that what we're doing?"

Steve glanced at the man, whose dark eyes were scanning the room like an x-ray, and then decided to get right to the point. "No, what we're doing is skirting around the elephant in the room."

Tony now looked at him, confused. "What's up with you today? I thought you didn't want to talk with me? I thought we _weren't friends_ or whatever." And there was that malice again, the kind of venom that was fermented in old wounds.

Sturgess met eyes with Steve, and a slow grin ate up his face as he took in the sight. It sent a thrill of anger shooting through Steve's veins, a shot of loathing into his blood. For a moment, he hated that man, and everything he'd done and everything he stood for. For everything irreparable that he'd broken.

"Come on." Steve stood up, glancing once at Tony and again at the man, who was still grinning at him as he backed through the door. "We're not doing this here, Tony."

"Fine. Whatever." Tony stood, and Steve led the way across the room.

Steve slit his eyes and looked for any signs of sabotage inside the room, but the party still seemed relatively normal. People were drinking and dancing like it was every other first class New York party that Steve had attended. They were all talking about Wall Street and gas prices and the recent SI stock dip. They were all oblivious, wrapped in their perfect worlds.

"_I've got three more heat signatures in the atrium, Cap, they're planning on trapping you._" A second voice said, bringing Steve back to reality.

"_There's an AK in the stairwell, with four, maybe five more. Hawkeye, what's your ETA?"_

"_I'm not coming."_

"_What?"_

"_Natasha, you know that my clearance was specified as civilian removal. I'm starting evac. East side fire exit, no one in, only party-goers out."_

"_Can you ignore those orders?"_

"_I'm on thin ice as it is."_

"_Dammit. I'm too far out. Cap, you with me? There's not enough time for me to get to you before they take the party. You need to take them down, and make sure no one gets killed. We need him for questioning, so-"_

Steve lifted a hand to his ear, "So don't kill Sturgess, I got it." he said, passing the pillar that Sturgess had been leaning on a few moments before.

"Did you say something?" Tony said from behind him.

Steve glanced back at Tony. "Um, maybe you should stay here."

"_Steve, we need him for the ID."_

"_Just don't get him shot, otherwise Pepper will have your ass for it."_

"Why would I-?" Tony paused. "What's going on?"

"_Cap, you need to get in that atrium now, otherwise they'll take the whole party."_

Steve let out a puff of air, "I might have lied to you." This was about to blow up in his face. He could see that already.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "About what?"

"Look, just, stay behind me, okay?"

"Are you sure you haven't been hit in the head?"

"_I've got six more coming from the flank."_

Steve cussed. "Target aquired," He said into his comms, "Engaging."

"What did you say? Are you...is that a comms link?"

Steve turned around and pushed open the doors, and was greeted with chaos.

"Steve, what the fucking hell is this?" Tony's voice came from somewhere behind his shoulder, but Steve was suddenly too busy to respond.

Upon opening the door, he was met with eight armed men who obviously weren't on his side. The one nearest to him raised his gun, a jet black Glock, so Steve started with him. He ducked to the side, shucking the gun in the man's hand so that the bullet in the chamber popped out. It landed on the brown marble floor with a tinkling thud.

By this time, the other seven were advancing, three toward Tony, four toward Steve. There guns were only half raised; their orders were probably to minimize the kills. They only really needed one, after all.

Steve clocked the guy he was dealing with across the face. He dropped instantly, the blow hard enough to knock him out. Steve ignored the four that were darting toward him and skidded to the side, taking Tony by the shoulders and shoving him into the corner between the wall and the door. "Stay here." He demanded.

"Who the...what the…?" Tony stuttered, but then Steve was spinning away, backhanding one enemy into another, sending them both off balance and spiraling toward the ground.

When he turned his attention to the other five, they each had guns raised, pointed at him. To make matters worse, the man with the AK-47 from the stairwell had made his way into the atrium. Six enemies behind six barrels of six guns faced him.

For a moment, the only sound was the dripping of water from the fountain.

Steve raised his hands, as if surrendering, wishing for his sheild. "Step aside." One of them demanded.

"Not happening." He said, conscious of Tony's eyes boring into his back. He could feel the tension in the room as his eyes swept for a way of defense. Tony was standing in the alcove that held the two massive oak doors that led to the ballroom. Steve was in front of him, and then there were several feet of shining stone between him and the six men with guns.

"We'll shoot, Captain. Step aside." They warned.

Behind them was a massive fountain, which was separated into several circular tiers. The top was pointed and spiky, and pumped water out down the sides, which in turn overflowed in each basin and dripped to the one on the tier below it. At the bottom was a pool of cold, clear water. It was a very sturdy fountain, hard and gray and large.

Steve eyed the AK-47, his biggest problem. The gun was battered and old, dented and dusty, but the magazine was full and the man who wielded it was probably more than capable.

"This would be a great time to tell me what's going on." Tony said, quiet enough that only Steve could hear.

"They put a hit on you." He replied briefly.

"They put a _what_ on me? Who?!"

"Tony, now really isn't the ti-" Steve was cut off by the sound of guns, and the plan that had been building in his head suddenly didn't have any more time to form.

He caught a bullet in the leg as he jabbed to the left, closer to the AK-47. Machine guns don't have great precision, but this was close quarters, thus nothing was a guarantee. Cap darted around the gun and grabbed it by the butt, letting his momentum send both him and the shooter into the wall beside him. Now with the upper hand, he threw the man into the half-circle of other men, where the idiots on his own team ended up shooting him. The gunfire ceased as the man dropped in a pool of blood.

Steve took advantage of this mistake and attacked. He disarmed one of the closest ones but yanking the gun out of his hands with his left hand and sending his right shoulder straight into his nose. He dropped, and Steve whirled, clicking the gun with old precision, hitting one in the shoulder, a second in the knee, and a third in the upper right chest area. They dropped easily, groaning in pain.

However, it was then when a bullet skimmed his wrist, and the gun dropped from his hand. "Damn," Steve cussed, and jerked an elbow backwards, catching one of the combatants in the ribs. He felt them shatter underneath the blow, and then Steve swept the legs out from underneath his attacker, causing his head to hit the floor with a sick crack.

There was suddenly one left, and as Steve diverted his attention to him, he saw that he was raising a gun and aiming right at him. Steve hesitated, only slightly, and he suddenly knew with an acute sense of reality that he was about to get shot in somewhere important, more significant than the leg.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, there was a _pop_ of a bullet. Steve braced himself for fire, but instead of him, it was the man himself who dropped. The man jerked to the side and then dropped, blood suddenly spilling from a hole in his side.

Steve tossed an incredulous look to the side. "Thanks."

Tony lowered the gun.

"Whatever." He said, eyes darting over the nine people they'd just taken out.

"Sturgess has disappeared." Steve said into his comms. "We have nine of his men." Turning around, he zeroed in on Tony. "You okay?"

Tony fixed him with a look. "What the fuck is going on?"

Steve sighed, exhausted already for some reason.

"_Six more on your flank, Cap." _

"I'll give you the short version. It's the Ten Rings." He began, conscious of the heavy sound of boots echoing down the hallway, "When Plan A didn't work, they moved on to Plan B. Once they found out about what happened with their drug, they decided they wanted to end it all-to end you. SHIELD picked up the intel about two days after you got out of the hospital."

"And how long have _you_ known about it?"

There was no sense in lying to him anymore. "Since the order was issued."

"Are you...are you _kidding me_?' Tony's face was curling downward. Steve knew with clarity what was coming. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Would you have really wanted to know?" The boots were growing closer, and Steve took his suit jacket off, reaching up with nimble fingers to undo his tie. His leg was throbbing where he'd been shot, but the spot on his wrist where he'd been clipped had already healed. "You've had more than enough fallout from this whole thing."

This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say. Tony was growing more agitated, his lips curling downward, his fingers white where they held the gun at his side. "So why even tell me now, then?"

"We weren't going to." Tony's was growing visibly more agitated, "but Fury called Natasha, Clint, and I in this morning and told us we needed a positive ID. Said we needed to make sure it was Ten Rings-related and not something else." Steve tossed his suit jacket and tie to the side and began rolling his sleeves.

"You...You really cannot be serious right now." Tony shook his head. "You know what? Fuck you."

"Tony-"

"No! This is my _life. _I don't know if you realize that or not. You can't… you have to stop treating me like I'm breakable. Just because I'm easier to handle that way doesn't mean-"

"Be honest, Tony." Steve interrupted, smoothing a hand down his leg to make sure the bullet hadn't hit an artery, "Would you have really wanted to know?"

Tony was quiet.

That was all the answer that Steve needed.

Turning, Steve was, ironically, grateful when the six enemies approached. It gave him someone to fight with other than Tony.

With calculated moves, Steve took them each out three at a time, with an easy flurry of punches. Soon, all six of them lay on the floor, in various states of unconsciousness.

"Anyone have a 20 on Sturgess?"

"_Negative, Cap. Building's surrounded. He's not in the main room."_

"_Heat signature upstairs, though. Just through the west staircase."_

"I'm headed that way." Steve said. "Come on, Tony."

"_Now_ where are we going?"

"Upstairs. And don't complain. You sound like you're twelve." He stepped over the first guy he'd knocked out, the one he'd punched so hard he was out cold. The staircase was only a few feet in front of that.

"You're going to treat me that way, anyways." Tony said.

"Tony-" Steve groaned, halfway up the stairs.

It was true; they were either drinking or fighting. The only problem with that was that Steve couldn't get drunk and Tony didn't have to pull his punches.

"Take the kid gloves off and level with me Cap. What the fuck is your problem?" Tony's voice dropped lower, but Steve didn't turn around. "I haven't forgotten what happened in that hallway, Steve." Steve froze, his hands gripping the banister, his shoulders tightening. _I'm worried about you._"You're not a shield, contrary to popular belief. You can't always take punches that weren't intended for you."

"We're not having this discussion right now." His voice, where it had been convincing and orderly before, was now stone cold.

"You were all for having it earlier." Tony protested.

Steve tipped his head back and laughed, just once, though nothing was funny. "Do you really think I actually had any intentions of talking to you?" He turned on the stairwell, surprised to find Tony only a few steps down from him. "I've told you this once, Tony. You don't need to pretend like you care about me. I get it, okay?"

"You're like a teenager, you know that? Open your damn ears, Rogers, and listen to what I'm trying to say here."

There was a whipping sound, like something whizzing through the air

"I've _been _listening." _And here we go again_. "I think my favorite nickname is Capsicle, by the way. It really captures who I am." Steve winced at the sarcasm, not having meant to let himself drift into old war habits. Deadpan humor had once been second-nature to him, and now it only bled out when he was saying things that weren't in any circumstances funny.

Tony looked like he was so frustrated he was about to stomp his foot, "Dammit, Steve, that's not what I'm trying to say at all!" He grunted, "You are literally the biggest idiot I've ever met sometimes, Christ, I-" Tony cut off quite suddenly, and then his face twisted. "Steve? You-you're...bleeding."

"What? Yeah. I got shot in the leg."

"No, I mean, yeah, but your shoulder...you're…"

Steve looked down at himself, at his right shoulder, and found it, oddly, to be covered in thick, scarlet blood.

And then he felt the pain; the fire trail a bullet had left in his shoulder, the sting of agony that only could be brought about by disconnected muscles and burned blood. He coughed around it, wondering how the hell it got there, and dropped to one knee, raising one hand to cup the wound.

"I don't mean to interrupt anything, boys." A voice from behind Steve said, and for a moment the therapist's words echoed through his head _What if whatever this thing is gets in the way? Someone is going to end up dead. _His brain went fuzzy as his heart pushed blood from the wound.

Sturgess came closer, and suddenly something cool and cylindrical was touching Steve's head. "Silencers do come in handy, don't they?" He said, his voice tinged with an accent that sounded Middle Eastern.

Tony's eyes were widening. "You." he whispered, the anger in his voice intensified, cooling into something that craved revenge. That was as much of a positive ID that Steve needed. "I remember you. You stood in that room and watched me come undone." Tony stepped up one step, "I'm going to kill you."

"No," Sturgess said, his voice black and silky. "I've watched you. I've watched the both of you, for some time now. And you know what? I think _I'm_ going to kill _you_."

Steve calculated that he'd have a very small window to accomplish what needed to be done. He took a breath, gathering himself. Just when he felt the cool touch of the gun leave the crown of his head, he sprung into action.

Even though every cell in his body screamed in protest, Steve raised his right arm, and grasped the gun in his fist. With all his strength, he clenched his hand, smashing the silencer on the end. Sturgess, however, made the mistake of trying to fire, and the gun made a very, very ugly noise before imploding in his hand. Now, with shrapnel in his arm, and no hearing in his right ear, Cap threw his weight toward Sturgess, and the two of them tumbled down the stairs.

Steve landed on top of him and immediately hauled him to a standing position, lifting him by the lapels of an expensive-looking brown sports coat. He was aware of Tony shouting something behind him, but all he could feel was buzzing in his ear and the blood dripping down his chest from his shoulder.

"Target in hand." Steve said into his comms, glaring with burning blue eyes at the small man in his grip. "Send in the arrest team."

"Very noble, Captain." Sturgess had a fresh black eye and it looked like he had a dislocated shoulder. "Noble indeed, what you do."

Steve didn't grace this with a response.

His arm was growing numb, his ear regaining strength. He felt tired and angry and exhausted.

"_Arrest team dispatched." _

Sturgess began to smile, as if he had heard what Natasha had said through the comms. He risked a glance over Steve's bloodied shoulder toward Tony, who Steve could sense was still standing on the stairs. "You want to know something?" Sturgess lowered his voice like he was in possession of a lucrative secret. "He asked for you. He _screamed _for his team. He pleaded to be saved. Tell me, Captain, were you noble then?" Sturgess grinned, nasty and slick and burnt. "You were in...Prague, if I recall?"

Hot pain dripped from his shoulder and his leg. So when his stomach clenched, Steve was not sure if it was because of the bullet wounds or because of the words. He tried to ignore Sturgess, but the man was mere inches away, and the memories of San Diego were not far from the surface.

_What if whatever this thing is gets in the way? Someone is going to end up dead. _

"Shut up." Steve ordered calmly. He knew what was happening-the villain tries to bring the hero to the edge in the hopes that he throws himself over it. He knew the trick. He would not fall for it. He also knew that Sturgess was sharp in more than one way-in tongue and in mind-and would find any weakness and exploit it. That's what he'd done to Tony. Sturgess knew how to read people, and knew what to say and what to do to bring them to that edge. He wasn't much in the way of a physical villain, but he still would know how to tear the world down, given the chance.

"My my, Captain, have I touched a nerve?" Sturgess sounded concerned, and Steve's grip tightened on him. He swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. "What _does _it take to get on America's Golden Boy's bad side, hmm? What did he tell you to send you halfway across the world?"

"_Oh for fuck's sake, Steve, stop with the melodrama. You want to bitch about us not living up to your precious, heroic Commandos? Take it somewhere else. We don't _care_. We don't want you here, Steve! Everyone that cares is dead."_

The words, though old, still had bite when they were dug up. Even forcefully dug up.

Steve remembered how he had reacted when he first heard them, and his hands fisted in the material of Sturgess' suit began to hurt where he was clenching them.

Sturgess was trying to bait him, trying to drag him along, push his buttons until he hit the jackpot. Steve tried to resist. But he could feel it in his bones, in the creases of his cartilage. He could feel it in the way his mouth had gone dry and his heart had slowed.

"I can see your heart, Captain. You're a liar, just as much as any of us. You stand before me as a soldier, but you confronted him as a man."

The blood was tracing slow, hot lines down the crease of the muscles in his torso. It stained his shirt, made him feel slick and uncomfortable and cold.

"And what's the difference?"

"You and I both know the answer to that, Captain."

"Well, enlighten me." Steve held back. He was still trying, though his words were gravel and his heart was stuttering to a cold stop.

"The soldier is who you want to be but the man is who you truly are," Sturgess said simply. "just as we tried to get Tony to see that he was Anthony Stark first, and not Iron Man. The _man _makes the soldier. What is a person worth without the things they are underneath?" Sturgess dipped his head knowingly, like Steve was a child. "Perhaps that's what makes you so pathetic, Captain."

"You underestimate me." Steve's vision was tinted with blue, and he felt a little bit like someone had just switched the air conditioner on.

He was cold.

Sturgess laughed. "You overestimate _yourself_."

Steve shook him a little, trying to rattle him, not trying to hurt him. "I'm the one that's got the upper hand here."

"Yes, but you're also the one who is bleeding." Sturgess' grin widened, his eyes drifting toward the wound. "I wonder if, perhaps, you will bleed out." He mused, cocking his head to the side. "What is it like, Captain? To stand on the outside looking in?"

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about." Steve said, his blood running cold. His fists were shaking. His breathing was growing heavier, like ice coated his lungs.

Sturgess chuckled. "Lies can only have worth once they are uncovered. So, what happens when your's is discovered?" Sturgess looked positively giddy. He leaned away, looking at him with clear, dark eyes. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one bothers to hear it, does it make any sound at all?"

Steve's heart plummeted all the way to his feet.

_We don't _care_. We don't want you here, Steve! Everyone that cares is dead._

_Everyone that cares is dead_.

He snapped.

Suddenly, like he wasn't in control of his own limbs, Steve was lashing out, letting go of Sturgess just to reel back and punch him hard enough to dislocate his jaw. It wasn't enough. He wanted more.

"Steve!"

Unanswered anger is unhealthy, he knew, but his had boiled over once again. And it might have been fate, or circumstances, or a cruel God who hadn't had time for him, but Steve wanted to _blame _someone. He wanted to take this fear, this anger, this devastation, and put a name and a face to it.

And then he wanted to beat it to death.

Steve grasped Sturgess once more by his lapels and slammed him into the wall. The stone cracked. "You know what?" He leaned in, whispering around breathless lungs. "I may be alone, but I will never bleed out."

"You...say that." Sturgess' words were dripping with agony, "only because...we cannot love what is broken." His words tinged with a groan and his eyes rolled backwards, "and thus… we cannot break."

Sturgess' hand slid up to his right shoulder, and suddenly, with a strength Steve hadn't expected, shoved his thumb into the wound. Steve staggered away at the blunt force of the pain and Sturgess made a move to escape.

In a sudden panic, Steve lashed out with one hand, and grabbed the front of Sturgess' shirt. Then, with all the strength of one arm, he used his centripetal motion to accelerate the man across the room.

He did not pull his strength.

The result was devastating.

"Steve!" Someone yelled from across the room, but he had already let go. His vision blackened with rage, with fear, with pain, and suddenly the only noise was a sharp, horrible cracking sound.

When the blackness cleared, Sturgess was bent backwards at an unearthly angle to the edge of the fountain.

Bent almost ninety degrees backward, Sturgess' spine was obviously broken. His head, which seemed to have cracked on the bottom of the fountain, was split open, oozing blood into the water.

His eyes were open. He was grinning.

He was dead.

Tony had darted across the room to stand beside Steve and observe what had happened. Now, he looked up at Steve with wide, brown eyes. "Steve?"

_What if whatever this thing is gets in the way? Someone is going to end up dead. _

Steve looked away. His gaze followed the ribbons of blood as they diffused into the water, turning from black-scarlet to pink. He was breathing heavily, and, as he watched, tucked his trembling hands into fists, the blood dripping from the wound and staining the whole world pink.

His vision fell out of focus and his breathing hitched for a second, and for a moment he was a hundred percent sure that this was it, this was the end. Because Sturgess was dead but Steve was still cold.

But then Tony, in his peripheral vision, said, "Thank you." It was the same, sincere, frayed voice that he'd used in that hallway a week ago.

And just like that, the Captain was numb once more. Not cold. Just numb.

The only sound was the trickle of the fountain.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Just as a PSA, Sturgess' words, "We cannot love what is broken, and thus we cannot break," are completely and a hundred percent untrue and not my opinion. Everyone in this world is broken in their own way and I want each and every one of you to know that you're still all beautiful and wonderful no matter what anyone says. <strong>

**So now that I'm done being corny, we've reached the end of the first five parts, and now on to the plus one part! It will work the same as before. I split it into 4 parts, thought I started with one (my imagination ran away from me goodness gracious)**

**I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has stuck with me through "The five times Steve Rogers was there for Tony Stark, no matter the cost," and thank all of those who will continue to stick with me through "and the one time he just...wasn't"**

**TO THOSE THAT REVIEWED**

**Tospringe: First of all, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the review. However, I never meant to discourage you from writing your own fic! One of the worst things that a writer can do is try to compare themselves to other writers. You can look at JK Rolwing or JRR Tolkien and think "wow, I'll never be as good as them," but 'good' in that sense, is relative. Writing is relative to the writer and the reader, and each writer has a style of their own. Therefore, if you compare yourself to someone else, it's pretty inaccurate because that's like comparing an apple to an orange. Both are fruit, both have many similarities, but in the end, they're too fundamentally different to judge one based on the other. So please please don't give up because of something that you read! I might have my moments where I'm a good writer, but I have MORE moments where I'm a terrible one. (You should see my first drafts omg) For this chapter especially, I sat in front of a blinking cursor for two hours. Also, I've been writing since the second grade. I've been writing every day for years. So, if you really really think that you're not a good writer and you love doing it, then just keep writing! It sounds dumb and cliched but reading and exploring writing through things such as fanfiction is such a good way to improve. Lastly, I'm not the end-all-be-all of Steve Feels. I feel at some times I make him to emotional or I try and hit to hard with the feels when it's not necessary. Sorry about going on a tangent to you, but I BELIEVE IN YOU YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOUR HEART DESIRES.**

**Iron Robin****: We are buds, I swear! I'm just...going to...you know...write some more intense chapters here soon. Oops.**

**Beakers47:****Thank you thank you thank you! Oh my goodness you guys are too nice to me.**

**ErinKenobi2893** :** Good, I really liked that idea! And I agree with you about the whole losing-it-in-style. It sounds horrible but simmering anger is just so much juicer and more entertaining to read lol.**

**Guest:**** That's heartbreaking but very true :'(**

**Huskygirl1998: Yes, that made sense. And thank you very much!**

**saillorraven: thank you so much! I feel like I don't tell you this enough, but you're like the awesomest person I know and I don't thank you enough or recognize you enough because I'm a horrible person sometimes but you're great and cool and very, very (too) nice to me. So thank you.**

**Stevenbucky1234: haha I've been behind on my regular writing recently (I have like three things on my wattpad account -_-) because of my recent obsession with fanfiction, but thank you so much for that very very kind review. **

**The Shadow Keeper: ****I love writing Tony. He's such a sassy person it's great.**

**koolgirl1120: I know, I make the characters super emotional but oh well :D But yeah, Steve and Tony are brOTP. That makes it kinda weird that I'm writing a fic about their friendship angst, but I don't even know. They're both great characters and fun to play around with. Thanks for the review!**

**Qweb: That's so true! :( Thank you for the review!**

**Your number 1 Fan: ****Fodder for my ego? Psshhhh you guys are my life. I am a horrible, horrible judge of my writing so without you I would be wallowing in how horrible my writing is and never practicing to improve my skill. You guys are my motivation. It's the least I can do to respond to it :D (And oh wow there's 11 this time?! You are too nice to me I swear!)  
>1) It's funny, because it wasn't until recently that I started playing around with my imagery. It started in the very end of This One's on You. Like, if you squint, in like the second to last two chapters I started talking about a gauntlet that was stuck to Tony's arm. It wasn't very great symbolism, but it was my start into "how can something in the physical world represent something more than it is?"<br>2) You're picking up on so much! Ahhh. It's great. Unfortunately, again, there's a lot I could say about that but I might end up spoiling something, so we'll have to revisit it.  
>3) I think I'm playing a game called "How Much Symbolism Can I Shove Into this Fic Until I Get Tired of it?"<br>4) I think it's funny that there's so many different ideas about time-it's linear but it's called "the circle of life" and some people believe in reincarnation and stuff. Time is a human concept and I think we all interpret it differently. That's why Steve sees it as sort of a linear circle. As things change he still stays the same. (if that makes any sense at all)  
>5) Again, potential spoliery material. I'm gonna stay away from that. Sorry :(<br>6) And that's the problem. Steve isn't a bottomless well. But Cap won't let it show. And he'll scrape against the sides until there's nothing left, like he's been doing.  
>7) I was going to go the route of comparing-it-with-Steve's-own-death, but I felt like comparing it to Bucky's "death" fits better. :D<br>8) that's what I see his depression as: something bottomless and empty and cold because he feels like the only thing that made him who he was died seven decades ago.  
>9) I just reblogged something like that on Tumblr, about the whole name-thing. I won't be able to do it justice by just describing it, but pretty much it summarizes that whole point you just made. On top of it it made me very sad. (it's on my tumblr: <strong>** .com near the top if you really want to see it, but just know it has to do with the name thing and that whole situation is heartbreaking)  
>10) It's a little bit ego, and a little bit image, and a little bit because of the past, but for some reason Steve has reason to believe that asking for help will make everything worse.<br>11) ...it's an ultimatum that Steve doesn't want to chose between, but in the end, it's inevitable that the lying will lead to him shattering.  
>Rejected This One's on You scenes? OMG there are tons. It was originally not going to be interconnected or super feelsy or angsty, and then something happened and that led to a lot of things being left out. This wasn't rejected, but everything to do with the shattered window was a last minute edition. Like I was five seconds away from uploading when I made that edit and it changed the whole story lol. I can't really think of others right now, but I can tell you I rejected one scene from this one that involved a Steve with amnesia. That was a poorly executed idea, and I trashed it after about 300 words. Lastly, feel free to PM me! I would love to talk about it!<strong>


	6. Chapter 6

It started with a sketch.

Somewhere around two in the morning, Steve was sitting cross-legged on the couch, an old pencil in his hand, his sketchbook laid bare on his lap. The eraser of the pencil tapped against the paper. _Tap tap tap_. It was quiet other than that.

Steve probably should have been asleep, but he'd been workings strategy with Hill all day, and his mind was still buzzing with ideas.

This probation thing kind of sucked.

It had been a month since his last mission. Since then, he'd only been allowed to analyze and develop new ideas for the team's fighting strategies. No missions. No fighting. To say that SHIELD was unhappy that Captain America had killed an asset was an understatement. Since they'd been able to bleed information from another source, they'd gotten over their initial anger, but the probation wasn't set to lift for another two weeks. So now, he was left without a purpose, without a job, and it made him listless and restless and hopeless.

_Tap tap tap_.

During his psychological evaluation, he'd sat with a man who'd asked him, "Was this an emotional response, Captain?" To which he replied, "I stand by my actions, sir. I believe the target to be an unnecessary evil and a threat to myself and my teammate." It might have been the truth, but it definitely wasn't an answer.

Even when he thought about it today, the words made him angry. _If a tree falls in a forest and no one bothers to hear it, does it make a sound_? He shouldn't have let that man get underneath his skin so much. He shouldn't have let it bother him. But he did; he'd lashed out, and now he had to live with it. He'd killed people before, but never like this. Never because it was personal, never because he couldn't get past himself and his emotions.

Steve carded fingers through his hair. He took deep breaths to keep the anxiety at bay.

He kept tapping.

This is why he refused to break. Because if he were to let go of his emotions, he would lose control. They were too big to reign in once they'd been completely let go. He'd been holding on too tightly for too long. And perhaps that was his own fault, but it had been an initial defense mechanism, borne of precedent and old stigmas. So he'd spent the past month smoothly fending off questions with easy lies and ignoring sideways looks cast by people that had their suspicions that he was lying to them. He'd feel his team's eyes but he'd duck his head and pretend not to notice them scrutinizing him for his irrational actions, not wanting to turn around to see if they were judging him or just concerned. He didn't want to lose their respect, and he sure as hell didn't want to keep asking himself how they'd act if he did, in fact, "bleed out". That's what it all came down to. So he pretended and they, as always, didn't see past it. It was better that way.

_Tap tap tap._

Tony had, of course, been the most difficult out of all of them. Three days after Fury had looked him in the eye and told him "No active field work, Rogers," Steve had been in the gym. Tony had recently had a day off, so he'd developed a new program which simulated battle. Once someone stepped into it, it started projecting holograms of aliens or Doombots or whatever, and then they started attacking. While the animated enemies learned from whatever Avenger was fighting it, they adjusted their skills and became a more and more lethal adversary. The program itself was able to record wins, losses, vitals and mistakes. It was better than a regular punching bag, so Steve had found himself letting go.

However, it didn't seem like long before the computer-animated robot that he decapitated with his shield wavered and then whole room disappeared into darkness and then the regular lights above clicked on.

Steve, breathing heavily and sweating, turned toward the door, through which Tony Stark had strolled through, holding a StarkPad, looking at him disdainfully.

"What do you want, Tony?" Steve had asked in between breaths.

"I figured I was on designated driver duty tonight." Tony said, and Steve fixed him with a blank, uncomprehending look. "You've been in here for three hours."

The uncomprehending stare turned unamused. "I know."

"You should take a break. Drink some water. Go to bed. It's almost midnight." Tony said, glancing down at his StarkPad and back toward Steve. Steve just rolled his eyes, finally understanding how Tony felt when Steve tried to pull him out of his lab.

"I'm fine."

"Is that why your last punch was," he looked down, frowning, "8,000 Newtons?"

"I'm just practicing."

Tony nodded, unconvinced. "You're touchy right now, aren't you? Bee in your bonnet, Spangles?" Tony was in a good mood and it was unfathomably annoying. "Hey, I have an idea. You take a break. Let's play a game. Twenty questions. I'll ask first."

"I don't-"

"What did Sturgess say to you to make you beat him to death?"

"Stop asking me that."

"Cap, I'll stop asking when you give me a straight answer."

Steve sighed, mentally trying to loosen the knots in his neck. He wiped sweat from his forehead, already feeling like punching something again, wishing for something to push these feelings onto.

It was hell not having answers.

"He needed to be terminated." Steve replied.

"I call bullshit. You're using lingo." Tony wasn't looking at him as he scrolled through more of Steve's stats from the program. "What did he say to you? I'm just curious. Makes me know what buttons not to push."

Steve didn't respond.

Tony stopped. "I'm not stupid. I'm the only person in the whole entire world that was in that room when it happened. I saw him talk to you. I know he said something" Tony's previously amiable annoyance was slipping into regular annoyance. He flicked his eyes upward. "I get not telling anyone else, I really do. But you could at least tell me."

"Tony-"

"Alright, I get it, fine. Here's the deal, you think of whatever he said to you, I'll continue to play twenty questions. If I get it right in the end, you have to tell me. Deal?"

"No."

"Is it smaller than a breadbox?"

"That's not relevant at all."

"Does it have stripes?"

"I'm not playing this-"

"Does it have anything to do with the fact that you don't like to be called Steve Rogers anymore?" The blood flooded out of Steve's face and his palms went cold. "You know, the whole Captain-America-has-a-secret-death-wish-that-only-Tony-Stark-knows-about-and-won't-fess-up-to?"

Steve clenched his jaw. "I thought I told you," he started darkly, "that we weren't ever going to have this conversation."

Tony cocked his head to the side, "Ding ding ding. We have a winner, don't we folks?" Tony had a nasty habit of opening wounds until they bled, of trying to squeeze everything out of a conversation, of kicking dead horses until they were well-past bruised. "When I said I was worried about you, I wasn't screwing around."

"And when I said don't bother I was being serious too." Steve had replied, and then, realizing the argument was fruitless, he straightened and slid past Tony out of the gym.

It had not gotten any easier.

Now, Steve sat on the couch, tap tap tapping against his sketchbook, wondering what to draw. The silence pressed into him, ringing against his ears, trying to draw him into the darkness.

He sat like that for another quarter of an hour, trying not to feel twitchy, before a shrill sound jerked him out of his own mind and back into reality. It was the emergency bell, designed for those spontaneous missions that popped up here and there. They weren't always end-of-the-world stuff, so Steve stuffed his sketchbook behind a couch cushion and reached forward to grab a StarkPad and see what the problem was.

He pulled up the file of a semi-urgent alien problem in central Europe that his probation still covered. So Steve idly read over the file, hoping that when everyone else filed into the room, they wouldn't suspect he hadn't left it since dinner.

"Hey Steve." he heard over his shoulder, and there was Natasha, just barely awake and still looking impeccable. "You know what's going on?"

He handed her the tablet as she plopped down next to him, "Nothing too bad."

"Great. Maybe we can be home for breakfast then." Clint said, sweeping into the room toward Natasha to read the file over her shoulder. "This looks like fun." He said after a while.

"You remember what we talked about, Clint?" Steve asked.

Clint nodded seriously. "Yeah. I remember. Back left side vulnerabilities."

"But only when Thor doesn't have overhead." Steve reminded.

"Crap. I'm going to keep forgetting that, aren't I?" Clint leaned away from Natasha and went to the parallel couch to collapse and do up his shoes. "I'm not sure we can last another two weeks without you, Cap." He said unhappily.

"You'll be fine." Steve replied with a tired smile. "You've been fine without me thus far."

Clint just snorted in response, which announced the arrival of both Bruce and Thor, who looked tired and grumbly as they took their places on the couches. "When's the quinjet coming?" Bruce grumbled.

"ETA in five." Natasha said.

"Bruce, I want you to run point for this one."

"But-"

"You won't need the Hulk, trust me. Direct from the quinjet. I'll be on comms through JARVIS if you need me." Steve said, putting his hands on his legs and pushing himself into a standing position.

The five minutes passed easily. After Tony sauntered in half-dressed and still half-asleep, the five of them said their awkward goodbyes and then left, the quinjet leaving with a mechanical groan and a puff of steam into the night.

Steve sat down.

It was quiet again.

He pulled his sketchbook out from its hiding place and flipped back to the blank page. This time, however, he was using the other side of his pencil, letting it drift across the page as his mind wandered.

Humanoid forms began to take shape. The silence was heavy and deafening, and Steve's mind was still wandering, skipping away from him. He let the silence push him forward, the emptiness around him drive him on.

He was thinking about the stars. About being small in a world that was too big.

When he looked down, his drawing looked like something between a wedding and a funeral, but that wasn't what got to him. It was the bodies in the drawing, the long torsos, the misshapen heads.

His waking mind and his wandering mind connected with a click.

Suddenly, Steve was in motion. "JARVIS!" He said, tossing his sketchbook down and racing for the stairs. He only had to make it one flight. One flight and then he'd reach his shield.

"Captain?"  
>"Connect me with the Avengers."<p>

"Sir, I..."

"_Now_." he replied. Aliens and central Europe, how had he not noticed _immediately_? How long had he been in Prague for? A month? Two?

After there had been an alien attack in San Diego, he'd taken a solo mission and uncovered some of the answers as to why they'd invaded in the first place and what their goal had been before the Avengers had easily and handily defeated them.

"'s wrong, Cap?" Came Tony's sudden voice from the speakers through the walls. He sounded tired but windblown, as he'd answered probably while in the suit, flying beside the quinjet.

"It's a trap, Tony. You guys need to get back here right now."

"A trap? What do you me-?" His voice blinked out.

"Tony?" Steve took the stairs two at a time, pressing his lungs, feeling his heart beat in his wrists. "Tony? Are you still there?"

JARVIS replied, "I've been disconnected with the communication link, sir."

Cap paused on the stairs, wondering what he should do. He didn't know what he'd started sprinting toward his shield, but he knew it would at least be a comfort until they could figure this whole thing out. "Is there any other way I can get them a message?"

"I can try."

"Tell them that after the alien invasion of San Diego, I was sent on a mission in Prague, trying to track those left on earth. What I found out was that those particular aliens had offspring with humans. These children have the emotions of a human but the capability of the aliens. They're trying to trap the Avengers." Steve was jumpy. He wanted to be there. He had started this, after all. And now his team was in danger because of it.

He'd witnessed these cross-breeds personally. They were lethal, dangerous nomads that left paths of chaos and blood wherever they went. Their trail had run cold in central Europe until he had caught it by accident again in the Czech Republic. He'd gotten a foot in the door, just enough to figure out what they were, but he'd had to blow his cover when...certain situations arose.

He did not think of these circumstances as he made his way up the stairs.

He took the last few stairs, his adrenaline still shooting into his veins in hot streams, and eased the door open.

It was then that he'd realized his mistake.

What had caused this spontaneous problem? What was their goal here? He was the one that had blown his cover. They didn't want to trap the Avengers, because they didn't know them.

They wanted to trap Steve.

Upon opening the door, something orange and potent whipped through the air and hit him straight in the chest. The power was overwhelming. There was a thousand bolts in his blood, rocketing their way into his heart, frying his brain, sending him into immediate cardiac arrest. Blood pounded in his ears. His breath was static and his skin curled with the electricity.

He was sent flying backward without another thought, and when his head collided with concrete, his grip on reality slid, and everything blinked out.

He woke to the sound of thumping. As feeling returned to his limbs, he realized the thumping was his own limbs as he was dragged up the stairs."_Il est_..." One of them said, and then revised his statement. Speaking in full French, whoever was dragging him up the stairs said, "_He should wake soon. I shot him again to restart his heart."_

"_What do we do with this other one?" _A distant voice asked.

They'd reached the top of the steps, and Steve was tossed to the side. "_Leave him_." The first said, "_We'll get our answers_."

Steve flicked his eyes open.

Reality slammed back into him. Every square inch of his body felt bruised. His mouth was dry and his lungs felt charred. His heart was beating erratically in his chest, desperately thumping out the beat of life.

He wanted to just lie there and rest for a while, perhaps close his eyes and dream. Exhaustion made his mouth loll while he felt like he was being smothered in a blanket. Everything was fuzzy and muddled.

He heard them in his room, rooting through his things. There was the sound of something crashing, some sort of hollow pinging sound. His breath caught when he realized it was his shield.

A familiar determination had his eyes flickering open, his elbows shifting to support his weight.

However, apparently having had his heart stopped for several moments had severely inhibited him, because as soon as he tried to get up, there was a savage kick to his ribs from something that he hadn't noticed was there. He fell back to the ground with a grunt.

Whatever had been guarding him shouted. "_Oi! He's awake." _

Footsteps made a sticky noise against hardwood flooring. "_Stupid pig_." A new voice said.

"_Je parle français,_" Steve stuttered, which resulted in another kick to the ribs. something cracked_. _It suddenly hurt to breathe.

"_Oui." _The new voice had said. "We know." He switched to English-flawless, unaccented English. "Get up."

Steve, suddenly, felt hands around his biceps, forcing him into a sitting position. They did not release his arms; instead, they chose to hold them behind his back with surprising strength. He resisted, but they held tighter, cutting into his wrists. Desperate, hot energy dropped into the pit of his stomach. He wasn't strong enough to break their grip.

Now, looking at the aliens, he cursed himself again. They were thin and tall, with elongated, gray torsos and knobby joints. Their heads were disfigured, like rocks carved by glaciers. The one that was looking at him fixed Steve with an icy, gray glare, his lips curving around yellow teeth.

He withdrew a weapon and pointed it downward, at Steve's head. It was then that he recognized the weapon; the details of that day were hazy in his mind, but he remembered disarming plenty of them.

It was the alien technology that could short an entire Iron Man suit in one blast, or stop a super-soldier's heart.

Things were clicking into place.

In Prague, he'd found out details about the attack in San Diego, about how the master race was planning on not-so-discreetly making more of their alien-human hybrid, which was called the Peregrinus. Steve hadn't found out much more, just that their plan had failed and the remaining Peregrinus were now the last ones left.

The alienoid crouched down, his knees making popping noises as he did so. "Do you recognize this?" he asked, letting the tip of his electric gun touch Steve's face. "You should."

"What do you want?" Steve asked.

"Revenge." The alien said simply, unashamed, prideful. The gun slid from Steve's face. "You and your..._Avengers_ have stranded all of us here. On this putrid earth with your race of humans. Our fathers will never return to this planet. They have left us alone to die." He growled, "Do you have any idea what that feels like?" His eyes flashed. "What it's like to be alone?"

Steve did not respond.

"No." The alien said, "You don't." His face turned upward. "I'll show you."

He stood.

He procured a nasty looking knife from somewhere.

The Peregrinus approached Steve once more, "What is it about humanity that makes them value one another so much? We base so much of who we are based on whom we love. What does it matter who we have in our lives? Why do humans suffer loss of one another so acutely?" The alien swallowed. Steve knew that this was a person who'd never known how to deal with the things that made up a major part of him. Someone who'd had emotions but never an explanation. The saddest part about all of it was that this pseudo-man was asking these as legitimate questions, because he'd never been given the answers.

It was things like this that made this creature so feral, so dangerous. They could not control what they did not understand. With something as big and as horrible as human emotion, it was unthinkable to live without explanation. Half of this man's nature had told him to be cold and uncaring and the other half had encouaged him look at the wonders of this life and react to them. He was an alien not just to this world, but in his own skin, fighting an internal battle between what he felt and what he knew to be true. "What's your name?"

"Does it matter?" Steve inquired, half angry, half out of pain.

"Everything does." The response was simple.

"Why?"

The alien's expression deepened, "I plan to find out." He said in devastated anger. Gray fingers gripped around the hilt of the knife and twisted it around, the human fading out as the alien won the battle. "You are human, are you not?" He didn't wait for a response. The knife dipped lower, piercing the skin of Steve's arm. As he spoke, he dragged it downward, splitting open the skin in a long, red line. "What is underneath?" The alien asked, and Steve jerked away from the pain, from the knife, but one on his other side was there to greet him with something else sharp in the soft flesh just above his hipbone. "Why do we bleed?" The first alien asked peeling away the soaked red t-shirt from the wound, leaving it exposed, bleeding and throbbing. "What is it that makes human life so important?" Slick hands reached toward his arm, and one dirty finger slid up the wound. "Who is this?" He pointed with a bloody finger.

Steve followed the Peregrinus's gaze, and for a moment, hated himself, and hated his slowed reaction times and senses.

There, leaning against the wall, was Iron Man.

His suit was smoking, still slightly bathed in orange light from the weapon he'd been shot with. However, his faceplate was ripped away, and the man inside was still breathing, eyelids fluttering. Hardly conscious but still holding on.

Tony's sluggish eyes met Steve's, and Steve imperceptibly shook his head. _I'm fine. Don't worry._

Apparently JARVIS had been able to get his message across. But how effectively? The rest of them weren't there. It was just Tony. He had to assume that they weren't coming. He had to assume that this was it.

"Who is this?" The alien repeated.

Steve lied, "I don't know."

"Liar." The Peregrinus growled, gripping Steve's jaw and forcing his gaze into the murky, brownish-gray depths of his eyes. "Is he important to you? A friend? When he wakes up to find you dead, will he give us our answers?" Tony grunted across the room, affronted by these words but unable to speak against them.

Steve had to keep control of this situation. He needed to stay in control. He could feel what he stood to lose. "_What _answers?' Steve answered coolly, trying and failing to maintain his composure.

"To this!" The alien gestured around him, "To all of it."

"You mean humanity." He said, dully, uninterested, like the topic in question wasn't tearing through his stomach and drooling out acid. Like he wasn't exhausted and half-dead and the stitches in his composure were not being slowly unraveled.

"Perhaps."

Steve's voice dipped in an unwilling Brooklyn accent as he managed a joke that Bucky would approve of. "I hate to tell you this, pal, but Tony Stark isn't gonna know the answers to that one."

This was, of course, not an appropriate thing to say. One twist, and the wrist of the same arm that was currently profusely bleeding was shattered. Steve let out a whimper, the pain turning his whole world black for a moment as it burned against his mind. Somewhere in the haze, there was a sound of protest.

"None of us...know." Steve sputtered, his entire arm engulfed in flame. "Just because...we're human...doesn't mean….we know...a damn thing...about how to actually..._be one_."

"_Our fathers would have the answers_." One of them behind him said, still in French.

"_Our fathers know nothing about this anguish." _Another snapped. "_Kill the human. He doesn't either."_

They started arguing in rapid French, and Steve used this time to try to communicate with Tony. Tony, having regained some composure, was slumped against the wall. His eyes were large and dilated in confusion.

Steve's eyes flicked backwards toward the two at his arms. _When you can, take these guys first._

Tony's eyes darted down his suit. _It's still fried._ A shrug, a difficult one, illustrating limited movement. _I'm not sure for how long_.

Steve looked down at his wound, still oozing blood. The fresh sting of pain made his mouth water, his eyes unfocused just to refocus again. He thought of the angry, coquettish sounds of French behind him. _I don't have much time._

Steve was right. The aliens were growing more animated behind him, more angry, thirsting for a revenge that they did not understand.

"_We will not stand for this_." One harrumphed.

"_He has answers. Somewhere_." The first one said. He leaned closer, sliding the knife back into the top of the already-healing wound in his arm. "Tell us, pig! What is this inside us?" he asked. The knife this time was shoved deeper, threading through muscle, tearing through tissue, until it hit bone. It began to drag down his arm.

The Avengers had awakened yet another emotion within these creatures that they did not have a name for. By defeating and banishing their master race, they had effectively doomed the Peregrinus to a lonely and useless fate.

Steve almost felt bad for them.

It was not their fault, this existence. They were left helpless and alone to wade through a murky future, and they'd developed a response to it. The violence. The chaos. It was their outward reflection of what it felt like to be abandoned.

The knife reached his elbow. One of them behind him yanked at him savagely, so hard that his shoulder popped out of his socket. He gasped, his throat clogging. It was agony. Complete, unadulterated pain, dripping from every pore, seeping from every wound.

"What does it mean?" One of them shouted, but he hardly heard around the pain. "Why are we cursed to live this life?"

To live is to face oblivion.

To wake up in the morning. To gaze up into the sky at night. To breathe. To die.

To live is to look into that emptiness and face the inevitable in order to try to look _past _it. To live is to try to fill up the void with happiness, to place the things inside it in the hopes that they won't get sucked away.

Steve had never managed to fill his before everything was whisked away from him. Because this darkness was bottomless; it was black and fathomless. His oblivion was wider and deeper than anything he'd ever known. The clock had run out before he had a chance to find his own happiness.

And each moment had been sucked away, a black hole in a universe of stars.

Steve had never liked the stars.

It was less because he felt physically small, less because of inflated muscles that didn't seem to be real, less because of what Steve Rogers used to be, and more because of what Steve Rogers still was.

He wasn't enough.

He would never be. He couldn't face down the oblivion that he'd been handed, instead he could only be slowly swallowed by it. He wasn't _enough_ to be Captain America, not anymore. He could only pretend to be. And Sturgess was right when he'd said that it was the man that made the soldier, and that what was underneath was what mattered.

What was underneath was Steve Rogers, and he'd lost everything a long time ago. He'd been sized up and broken down by a reality that was too big for him. He'd been forced into a world that he was too small for.

Steve Rogers couldn't fight anymore.

The alien kneed him in the side, and Steve fell forward,weight shifting onto his knees, hitting his hands with a crack. The blood dripped down his arm and slickened his palm. The pain was excruciating.

He found his head being pulled up by his hair, his eyes forced to meet Tony's. Tony was staring at him, afraid and alone and worried, and Steve could only manage to deaden his gaze and focus on the blood.

Though his neck bared and stretched, Steve did not need to school his face into a calming expression. He was experienced with this kind of thing. It was his second nature, now. The look was patented, something that he felt more comfortable in than his own skin.

"What does this moment mean?" the alien asked, his hand tightening in his hair, his breath hot near Steve's ear.

The tip of the knife slid along his skin, pressing against the edge of his throat. It was sharp and metallic against the lump in his throat. Steve's eyes began to water, because he was so numb and so scared at the same time; and Tony was looking at him like the whole world was hanging in the balance, like Steve was the one that would tip the scale.

He was too weak to hold it up.

His life did not flash before his eyes, because he had already lived it. He had lived his life in moments and left them where they belonged on the path behind him. Each moment is a pinprick, something small and precious and beautiful, but nothing more. Life is made of moments, of do's and don'ts, of yes's and no's, of good and bad. Of love and loss.

So, there was a time in his life when there was Steven Rogers, the little boy with the mother who worked too hard. When he was the kid with the one friend. The Brooklyn boy without a home. There was a time when he was Steve Rogers, and he was giving his life for his friends and his country and the woman he loved. But those times were gone. They were lost on the beach of time, and trying to find them in order to mourn them would be like sifting through the hot sand to find a single grain. It would be painful and horrible and frustrating and so Steve had told himself to keep walking, to keep going, to distance himself from the pain in order to try to make it stop.

So what do those moments mean? What can something give you when it's already gone?

The moments, these memories, they're all just blips on a linear timeline. Time comes and comes and comes and when the clock reaches the end, each event is too minuscule to make out. Though that clock has stopped, there's still more ticking.

Time just doesn't stop. It weathers on.

And, too small to pinpoint, these moments are left behind.

They're nothing and everything and oblivion and infinity and they're _just not enough_.

"What do any of them mean?' Steve countered, his voice losing tone.

"I don't know." the alien said.

And Steve, despite years of maintaining the image, despite the thousands of other times he'd recovered, let his face fall, the mask crumble around beside him. Tony, aghast and in pain, stared at him like they were both falling.

"I don't either." Steve said, acceptance mixing with the hollowness. He did not close his eyes. Instead, he kept them on Tony, because he was sorry, because he was scared, because he was not Captain America.

"Of course you don't." The Peregrinus said.

The alien pierced the vulnerable skin in the fleshy hollow of his throat.

He flicked his wrist.

Steve didn't have time to process anything other than the blood, hot, fresh, pouring from him, before his body hit the floor.

His world became bottomless once more.

* * *

><p><strong>Shout out to Samuel Beckett's <em>Waiting for Godot (En Attendant Godot) <em>Kurt Vonnegut's _Slaughterhouse 5_, Ed Sheeran, Google Translate, and the -30 degree weather for the inspiration for this chapter. **

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**Nilly's Issue: Well, better late than never :D I'm kidding. But in all seriousness, thank you so much for reading and reviewing!**

**Sly Souls: Awww that's so sweet of you too say. I really don't deserve everything you all have been saying, but I appreciate it a lot. **

**The Shadow Keeper: I'm glad that you appreciated the character of Sturgess. I have this tendency to write super cliched villains, and I was trying my best to not make him super slick and evil and overused. thank you!**

**Your number1 Fan: I'm going to PM you as a response, lol.**

**Beakers47: Every Avenger is just a big bundle of issues, aren't they? It makes it easy to take them on a "feels trip" (very clever lol). BUT thank you for reading and thank you for reviewing!**

**Iron Robin: Steve makes me hurt too. Captain America: The First Avenger was actually my first Marvel movie (or at least the one that drew me in). And by the end of it I was like, "what is this what is going on why do i feel this way?" Long story short, I will never not have Steve Feels. About the "whatever" line: I'm glad you liked it! I wanted to include it to make it seem less like Tony was the damsel in distress and more like, "omg wtf steve you're so annoying tell me what's going on here." Thank you for the review!**

**Huskygirl1998: I totally get where you're coming from; there's such a stimga on fanfiction in today's society. It sucks because if i'm proud of something that I've written, I can't show my real-life friends because they'd definitely judge me. But what you and I both know, is that there is _so _much more to fanfiction than what people think about it. I'm glad I've been able to defy the stereotype of awful fanfiction in your mind. In all reality, I don't even know what I'm doing when I write. I use fanfiction as more of a chance to explore my own skills and practice and take writing risks and have the ability to get feedback. It's been such a good thing for me; it keeps me writing and learning, it boosts my confidence (I've gotten negative reviews but they've always been constructive), it gives me some place to vent all my fangirl feelings. Anyway, thank you so, so much for that very kind review. I appreciate what you said a lot!**


	7. Chapter 7

The feeling was satisfying.

He had been trying to wade through the darkness for what seemed like forever now, and now that he'd given out he was amazed at how tired it had been making him.

For now he was content to just...float.

All around him there was nothingness, and perhaps he was falling into that abyss, and perhaps he was dying, but all he could do was spread his arms out and let himself drown.

He'd been so terrified of giving up; like if he stopped pushing back, his muscles would deflate and he'd lose the serum and this life and whatever frail grip he had left. He supposed that if he had the strength to look down at himself he'd see his own ribs and knobby knees again, but did it matter? Did any of it matter?

The darkness was serene when he finally handed himself over to it.

Sometimes after missions, when each Avenger would retreat to his or her own corner of the tower to brood or mull over the mission, Steve would turn off his locater and wander away. He'd end up somewhere dark, somewhere unknown. Somewhere quiet. And he would find a bench or a rooftop to sit on and put his head in his hands and listen to the sound of his own breathing

The world would fall away until it was just him and the blackness, him and his brain, and he'd wonder what it would feel like if his whole life was like that.

He found the answer.

It was satisfying.

* * *

><p><em>"<em>_Daddy_," _A voice whined through the darkness. "C'mon, wake up." Shaking of his shoulders. "Steph and Tony are already here and Uncle Bucky told me to tell you that you're an old man and shouldn't be sleeping in this late."_

_Steve chuckled, "Of course he did." He still didn't open his eyes._

_ "__Daddy! Come on" The voice drew out the words until they were several syllables long. "Get up!"_

_ "__Steven." That was Peggy's voice. "If I'd have known I'd be raising two boys at once I never would have married you."_

_ "__Ugh." He groaned. His eyes slotted opening, revealing the light blue light of the morning shadows on the ceiling. "Peg, you know I'm not good at waking up."_

_ "__Honey, everyone knows that." She told him from the bathroom._

_ "__Then why did we schedule this so," he sat up, his head aching, "early? James, what time is it?"_

_His son dropped his shoulders and gave him a glare that James seemed to have patented in his eight years of life. "It's like eight o'clock. Pop! C'mon."_

_Steve yawned. That kid was way too energetic for his own good. It didn't help that Steve wasn't much of a morning person. "Alright, James, I'm up."_

_He kicked warm blankets off his legs and slid bare feet to the floor, stretching upward, lifting his neck, swallowing around sudden soreness._

_The bedroom door flung open, and two more bundles of energy came hurdling through. "UNCLE STEVE!" They yelled, flinging themselves toward him. Steph came first, a blur of rumpled clothes and long black hair, knocking into his chest, kicking the breath from his lungs. _

_ "__Who let you in?" He asked around her tight hug.  
>"Uh, we did." Bucky said, from the door. Howard, next to him, said, "Your locks are not exactly hard to pick, you know."<em>

_ "__Peg, remind me to get new friends," Steve grumbled, still coughing out pieces of Step's hair. _

_As Steph disentangled herself from Steve, Steve caught site of Tony. At five years old, he was a chatterbox. He was blabbing away about something, eyes pointed shrewdly at Steve._

_ "__Tony? What are you saying?" Steve inquired_

_Tony opened his mouth._

"Jesus fucking Christ Steve. I can't." A catch in his voice, "The comms are still down and, Jesus, you're going to bleed out, I can't…"

A pixelated form took shape, blocking out the white of the ceiling. Someone was leaning over him. Someone was talking to him. Said someone was looking down at him intensely, and his hands were pressed against the sides of Steve's neck.

"Okay. Okay. You're awake. Good. That's good, right JARVIS? What do I do now?"

"Continue as you are, Sir. Reddit user equatorbit says to maintain pressure after all airways and breathing are secure-"

"Are you giving me medical advice based on _Reddit_?" Tony sounded gruff.

"There aren't exactly many places that have information on slit throats, Sir."

Pressure in Steve's neck grew.

"Alright. Alright. You still breathing? Good. That's good. Don't stop breathing." Tony took a long breath, and his face hovered over Steve's again. "Look at me, Steve. Come on. Look at me." Steve tried to meet his eyes, but Tony was still too blurry. "Don't you dare die on me, alright? I've said a lot of things to you and we've fought a lot but you're my teammate and if you die I'm literally going to murder you."

There was blood on his lips, he realized. Blood in the back of his throat. It was rotten and warm, enough so that it was abhorrent, that Steve wanted it _out_.

He started choking. Small pixels of the world blinked out, turning black once more.

"Steve, goddammit, can't the super serum, like, super clot? You're still bleeding. I can't stop it. I need to.. Holy...I have to...I need to… I can't…"

_Bucky didn't have words to express what he was feeling. "It was...Jeez, man, you really know how to pick 'em, huh?"_

_Steve sputtered a wheezy but true laugh from asthmatic lungs. "So I take it you liked the movie?"_

_"__Liked it?" Bucky sputtered, "That was the most god-awful thing I've ever seen. It was...why are you laughing? Are you laughing at me?" Steve skittered out of the way as Bucky lunged for him. "You little punk! You did this on purpose!"_

_"__Maybe." Steve shrugged and fell back into step with Bucky as they continued down the dark, New York street. _

_Bucky slung an arm around his shoulders. "I'm gonna kill you, kid."_

_"__I get that a lot." Steve said, deadpan. It was that kind of humor that always had Bucky in stitches; the sarcasm, the sardonic kind of jokes that he was never sure if Steve was really joking or not when he said them._

_Bucky threw his head back and laughed, his arm tightening around Steve's neck._

_And tightening. _

_Until Steve was feeling fuzzy and painful._

"Buck, you're chokin' me." He mumbled, his voice bubbling. A small stream of heat leaked from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

"What? Steve, please don't talk, leave that to me." Pressure on his throat was still increasing. He felt like Tony's hands were squeezing the blood out of him. "Just….just focus on staying awake this time, okay? Don't fall back asleep, keep your eyes open, okay?" His eyes rolled to the side, unable to focus, but even as Tony's words became garbled lumps of gibberish, he tried to focus on the tone. Tony was desperate. Tony was scared. Tony was trying to hold it together.

Steve saw himself in Tony Stark, for a moment.

"We still have JARVIS, and he says that you have a chance, but you can't fall asleep. You can't leave me again, Steve? Steve! Do you hear me? Steve, listen to my voice and please, for God's sake, don't close your eyes. That's it. Just keep breathing. Just keep-"

_"__That was nice."_

_Steve agreed. "It was. Very nice. It was great to see all the guys again."_

_Her chin dropped onto his shoulder, her hands snaking from his back to around his chest. "I guess."_

_Steve shucked one shoe off and moved to the other. "Peggy, we've talked about this." The second shoe came off, and he moved one hand to cup her's. "You've got SHIELD and Lord knows Howard still needs you here. Do you think that man would last a day without you? I think we'd all crash and burn if it wasn't for you." He paused, unable to see her, hoping she was smiling that half-smile of hers. "And I can't just ignore this. The president himself has asked for Cap on the front lines, and I'm not going to stand by and watch American men die. It's not who I am."_

_"__I know." She sighed. "And Captain America needs to be in Korea. I get it. I just…" Her hands slid from underneath his and she moved around the bed to face him, so they were looking at one another. "I wish you weren't Captain America sometimes." Her hands reached for his tie, carefully undoing the knot, knuckles brushing against the hollow in his throat. "I wish you were just Steve Rogers."_

"Steve, c'mon. I need you." The voice was suddenly Tony's. "I need you to be here for me. Can you do that? You told me you'd be there when I needed you, and I'm here and I'm asking you to be here. And I bet you know what that means to me. I'm telling you that I need you. I'm asking you to stay. I don't do that a lot, okay? And you know that. You know that I have all these abandonment issues and I cover it with alcoholism and sarcasm. You've always known, and you've always been there. Don't leave me now. Don't make me go through this, Steve." Tony's words tugged at something inside Steve, but he couldn't do it anymore. He wanted to try, for Tony, but he also wanted to be selfish. The nothingness was tempting. "I haven't done enough yet. I haven't...I should never have left you in that hallway, okay? And you're right, I treated you like my safety net and nothing more, but really, the jokes on you, because I've formed an attachment now, and that means you can never leave me, ever. Seriously. Ask Pepper. So, just do me one last favor and not die. Alright? You've lost a lot of blood, so you're gonna need to go ahead and stop bleeding. Steve. Steve? Can you hear me?"

_"__Did you hear me?"_

_"__...Yeah. Yeah, I did." Steve's eyes widened. "Howard...this is incredible."_

_A proud huff. "Stark Tech, Cap. I'm going to change the world. I can feel it." Steve smiled, though Howard couldn't see it through the phone._

_"__Can you imagine if we had this during the war?"_

_"__I know." Howard was excited. "This is...this is it, Steve. I can feel it." There was gurgling noise in the background, a few moments of static and then something crashing. "Oh crap. That's Tony. He's teething. Maria keeps finding bite marks in our oak banister, you know, the one from Germany. I gotta go, but I'll call you later so you can tell me how awesome this is."_

_Click._

"I took those two out first, just like you said. Just like you told me." His voice was blinking in and out, and Steve wasn't sure whether it was because he was going to be sucked away for good, or if the shock was taking over. "As soon as the suit regained power. I'm…" More wavering, and for a moment Steve wondered if this was part of the dreams. "I'm sorry. I...didn't get there soon enough." Tony's voice sounded scratchy, tight. "I should have...I should have known."

Steve jerked his head in response, and found something hot and wet on either side of his body. There were still hands on his neck, pressing as hard as they possibly could.

He tried to focus. As hard as he could.

He brought his eyes up to meet Tony's and offered him a small smile. "Don't look at me like that, Steve. I swear to God. Don't look at me like you're going to close your eyes and not open them again." Steve realized the puddles on either side of his head were his own blood.

His head felt light, airy.

His eyes were exploding with dark spots, and the arteries in his neck rubbed together, dry, most of their contents spilling down either side.

"They only...only...nicked both arteries. It's not serious. You're just...you're just losing a lot of blood, okay? No big deal. Nothing we can't fix together. You just...you just need to…" Tony's voice was hysterical, high pitched, incredulous. "You're not going to leave me, you hear? It's taken me too damn long to figure out what a great goddamned friend you are to me and it's taken me even longer to try and return the favor." His voice was lowering, the hysteria molding into something darker, something serious. "Please, Steve. _Please_."

_"__Why d'ya think he chose you?" Bucky was slightly drunk, but everyone was. _

_Steve, knowing Bucky wouldn't remember this in the morning, reflected. He'd never really given a serious answer to this question. "I dunno, Buck." he scratched the back of his neck._

_"__Do you want to be Captain America?" He asked, less out of idle curiosity and more out of drunken honesty, like this was a question Bucky had always wanted to ask. _

_"__Does it matter?" _

_"__Of course it does, Steve!" Bucky started to say something else, but then revised. "Why d'ya think he chose you?"_

_Steve clapped him on the back. "'Cause I was small, Buck."_

_Bucky giggled. "You were real small."_

_"__I was."_

_"__Would you take it back?" Bucky got serious again, "Would you ever want to go back to how you were?"_

_"__Small?"_

_"__Yeah."_

_"__No." Steve answered decisively. _

_"__Why?"_

_"__I think," he said, craning his neck to look up, "I can do more when I'm Cap. I mean more when I'm him."_

_"__I doubt that." Bucky snorted. "Bein' small isn't always about muscles, Steve."_

"Widow? Natasha, is that you? Thank God, we need everyone to report to our location, stat. We need a MedEvac, like, five minutes ago." Steve didn't know who was talking.

"What's going on?" Steve didn't know where he was.

"It's...Steve...he's….his throat. They….shorted the suit and slit his throat, and, God, he's hypovolemic already, he's going to fucking die. I…" Tony's voice broke. "I think he's going to die." Steve couldn't remember what had happened.

Steve could not feel the pain anymore.

"We're on our way, Stark." A pause. "Everything's going to be alright."

Steve wondered who he was. What he was doing.

Perhaps he was already dead.

The moment faded out.

* * *

><p><em>Beep.<em>

His eyes flicked open and he was greeted with hot, white light.

It was uncomfortable. The light was too bright, too centralized over his head, and it wasn't white enough, wasn't pure enough. In fact, the whole room looked yellow.

_Beep_.

His eyes fluttered, offering to take him back to Bucky and Peggy and Howard, but even through his muggy head, he was intrigued by this new nightmare. _Beep._

Everything was still and quiet, and there was some annoying, asinine beeping going on somewhere over his head. Something itched at his skin. Something else was constricting his breathing, which he had never been a fan of. _Beep._

For a few moments, he couldn't move, but when his brain whirled and stuttered to a stop, his eyes flicked to the side. _Beep._

_Beep._

The nightmare intensified, because he realized that he was not dreaming.

He'd woken up. _Beep._

_Beep. _And there was no one sitting in two empty seats next to his bed, no one perched on the foot of his bed or hovering near the door. _Beep. _There was no one by the empty whiteboard on the far wall. _Beep_. There was no one on the couch near the window._ Beep_.

Nothing but the beep of the heart monitor.

_Beep_. _Beep. Beep._

And then Steve started to laugh.

It was a lot more than his usual; the quick, one laugh, out the nose that lacked any joy at all. This was a deep, raw laughter that started in the depth of his lungs and shook his whole body, the whole bed. He was gasping for air, and his laughter echoed against empty furniture and the ghosts in his room carried the laughter with them.

There was something just _so funny_ about how he'd now died twice. But, as demonstrated before, they could take even that from him.

And the laughter got broader and deeper and wetter and darker, and there was something building in his throat, something bouncing against the walls of his organs. Tears leaked out of his eyes and then he was laughing so hard that something warm was clogging his laughter, and the sharp pain in his throat caused the laughter to be more just hysterical gasps in the fight for air.

As his laughter died and the dreams took him once more, it occurred to him, fleetingly, that he didn't know how to laugh anymore.

* * *

><p><span><strong>TO THOSE THAT REVIEWED:<strong>

**AlwaysAmusedAO3**: **Thank you for the review, and yes, there is definitely more to come.**

**Guest**: **No no no! I promise you, this is not how it ends. There's another part. I promise.**

**MP3**: **The funny part about that, is that I didn't even realize it was a cliffhanger until I had posted it and people were reviewing about it. I didn't mean to cut you guys off so bad, but...I just kinda...did. Oops**

**SlySouls: Well, not exactly. But there's more to come, so you'll see.**

**Huskygirl1998**: **thank you for the review! Steve definitely has his demons, that's for sure.**

**sailorraven34: yeah, my first draft was very, very different from what I actually ended up posting. But I'm glad you liked it!**

**SolarRose29: Again, I'm just going to PM you.**

**Qweb: thank you! And I apologize if this took a while for me to post. Real life has recently punched me in the face with responsibility. It's terrible.**

**cas-the-unicorn: yes yes yes! It does (obviously) have a part two, but there's also another part, and I'll be posting that soon, hopefully. Also, I don't ship Tony/Steve, I just really really want them to be best friends, so I figured I'd write a super overly angsty fic about their journey into becoming besties.**

**Iron Robin: *returns high five* It's funny, the characterization of the aliens was a last minute thing. At first they were nameless and faceless enemies, and then I figured I could use them as examples as "what could go wrong" when emotions weren't dealt with well. **

**AnotherBook: I didn't even realize it was a cliffhanger until I started getting**** reviews about how it was! I feel bad, I didn't mean to scare all of you guys, but, oh well. **

**The Shadow Keeper: Don't worry. There's still more to come. (And yes, there is bromance..)**


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Sorry this took forever guys. Real life kidnapped my muse for a while there. **

* * *

><p>"...and I were stuck in a debriefing. Hill was pissed. Fury wouldn't stop lecturing. Anyway, we couldn't get out of it. I didn't think it was a big deal, but then you know last night when I went back to the tower? "<p>

"Yeah?"

"Oh my God, Stark _reamed _me. I don't think I've ever seen him that way. I thought he was going to pull the suit out and slap me into next week."

"He wasn't happy with me either. Though I wasn't far. I had been just down the hall trying not to yell at the doctors. I guess it doesn't matter now, anyway. What's done is done."

"I guess. I dunno. I didn't realize why he was so mad until he dragged, I mean, literally he _dragged _me into the security room and made me watch the tape." Pause. "Have you seen it, Nat?"

"I have." Her voice was soft, softer than Steve had ever heard it.

"It's…It's…" For once Clint was at a loss for words. "I thought that he was doing okay."

"We all did. He's just good at faking it." There was a shuffling in the room.

"I just—I feel like shit about it, y'know? He's the best of us, he really is. And to find out—"

"I know, Clint." And there were suddenly thin fingers on Steve's forehead, carding through his hair. "I know."

Their voices faded into contemplative silence.

"You know what pisses me off the most, though?" Clint didn't wait for a reply, "It's the fact that Tony obviously knew something had been wrong with him, but still bailed before the quinjet even got to the helicarrier. And then he has the nerve to be mad at me for not being here when Steve woke up. But he hasn't even shown up once."

"Clint-"

"Steve almost died, Bruce." His voice grew harder. "And where the fuck is Tony?"

"There's more to this, Clint."

"I do not understand, then." Thor jutted in, his first words of the day. "Why is he not here with Steven?" Thor asked, confused.

"I think he's angry, Thor." Bruce replied.

"He's got no right to be angry." Clint huffed.

"I don't know. I don't know what Tony's thinking. Either way, I had to listen to him smash up his lab this morning, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it."

"And the lady Pepper?"

"You know how it gets when Tony's on the end of the rope. She's been trying to convince him to come and take a watch, but he doesn't want to come." Natasha said.

"I don't know what's going on. But, then, do we ever when it comes to them?" Bruce let out a sigh. "They've always been weird. Ever since we first met."

"Have you ever inquired of it to Tony?"

"I tried, initially. Steve was quick to accept all of us, you know?" Bruce's voice softened a bit, and then he continued. "I figured it was the least Tony could do to try and be nice to the kid. But all they ever did was fight. But you remember when they got kidnapped together?"

"I recall."

"A few days later, I found Tony at the bottom of a bottle, and you know what he said? He said, 'He'd die for me.' And I told him that we all would. I think it was too much for him to handle. And now, after everything that's happened at the tower and with Tony…I don't really think he's angry, Thor."

"Then what is he?"

"I think he's afraid. I think he's hurt. I think Steve has been one of the only constants in his life. Clint and Natasha are gone all the time, I'm his best friend but even when I'm there I'm somewhere else, and you're never here for more than two months straight. I think Steve has helped him down from a lot of ledges that neither of us know about."

There was a quiet silence. Steve felt eyes on him. He squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to face reality yet. "If only," Thor said, his voice far away, "Anthony had done the same for him."

Bruce let out a sigh. "And that, Thor, is our problem."

* * *

><p>Steve figured it was time to open his eyes.<p>

His eyes fluttered, and the familiar-yet-unfamiliar yellow light of the room greeted him with a glare. Unwillingly, Steve let out a muffled groan as the pain hit him.

Natasha, alert as ever, looked over at him. "Steve? You awake?"

He groaned in response, the words getting lost in his throat. White, blazing pain clogged around him, and it was everything he could do to stop himself from crying out. He squirmed.

"What is it?" She asked him.

He wanted water. He wanted out of there. He wanted to rip the stitches out from his neck so that they wouldn't hurt anymore.

Steve, bleary and groggy, swallowed around a scratchy throat, and instantly his hand moved up to cup the bandages at his neck. Pain rendered his breath ragged and made his neck feel excruciatingly hot, like there was now liquid fire in his veins instead of blood. His fingers spread to the edges of the bandage, hoping to peel it off and thus peel the discomfort away.

He wasn't fully awake, not aware enough of his other Avengers, so when a cool hand grasped around his wrist, he started, his eyes following the slim arm.

"Don't," Pepper said. "You need the bandages."

He opened his mouth as if to speak. "Don't do that either. Doctor's orders." She said, still holding his wrist. "Do you know where you are?" His eyes flicked away from her.

There was Bruce, concern pasted over his face, glasses perched at the end of his nose. Pepper, her fingers still lingering on his wrist. Clint, his arms crossed, his eyebrows folded. Thor, bracing himself at the end of the bed, leaning forward. Natasha, looking at him with muted emotion.

"Steve." Pepper repeated again, her words gentle as she eased his wrist down to the bed. "Do you know where you are?"

They were all looking at him, faces blank with a lining of concern. Something twisted, deep within his stomach, because he felt like he was peeled open, like he'd just woken up on the operating table and the doctors were standing around him, looking at his beating heart.

He was uncomfortably, suddenly reminded of the way it felt when there were angry eyes on him and a knife in his arm. _What does this moment mean?_

The pain grabbed him with two hands and tried to force him under again.

"What…" he mumbled, his voice slurred, his words darkened by unconsciousness. "Where's…?" He started, but he couldn't get the sentence out.

His eyes blinked and slid closed again.

The last thing he remembered was Natasha's cool hands on his face again and her voice softening. "Oh Steve." She said, with an emotion that sounded, at least for Natasha, like her heart was breaking.

* * *

><p>The next time he woke up, something felt different.<p>

The room was still yellow and ugly and oppressive, but it was quiet. Still.

Steve focused on steadying his breathing around the pain, trying to zero in on the beat of his heart or the up and down motion of his chest.

"You're awake." A voice said. Steve was hit with a startling, unpleasant sense of déjà vu when he saw Tony Stark in the chair next to his hospital bed, his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.

His heart started beating faster, and if Steve could talk he would probably ask Tony to go away.

But Tony was not looking at him. Glazed eyes were fixed on a spot on the wall, not on Steve.

The room was quiet for a few moments.

"I only held your neck together for three minutes and twelve seconds." He started right into it, no pleasantries, no easy conversation. This was going to be difficult, Steve could already tell. "But you lost 45 percent of the blood in your body." He began in a dead voice, "You flat-lined twice." Tony's breath caught, but he continued as if it didn't. "They had to give you a clamp on the quinjet on the way to the helicarrier." His words felt empty. "And then the hypovolemic shock on your heart almost killed you." He said, "They put stitches in during emergency surgery." Tony still was not looking at him. "You've already blown them once." Tony sighed. "And the serum has already healed the brain damaged from the blood loss, and most of your broken bones." Steve watched as Tony's face contorted for a moment. "You're really lucky, Steve." His voice dipped into a whisper. "You should have died. If you were any other person on this planet, you would have."

Then Tony rolled his neck, and suddenly he was looking straight at Steve. "We need to talk. We've needed to talk for a while now," Tony said. His face darkened. "And you're not allowed to speak. So I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen. Got it?"

Fear and pain and desperation melded into a lump in Steve's throat; it was white hot and dense. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Tony beat him to it. "Don't you ever, _ever_ do that again," He said.

Steve grunted. Tony held out a hand to stop him. "No, Cap." He said, his words venom. "I'm not done. So you know what? I'm going to talk, and _you're going to listen_. Got it?" Tony didn't leave room for argument. "Don't you _ever_ pull something like that again."

Steve watched as Tony catapulted from the chair, and moved toward the door. He closed it, letting it shut with a click. Then, with his back to Steve, he said, "I'm not in the practice of being indebted to someone." Tony suddenly turned, and began to pace at the foot of Steve's bed. Back and forth. Back and forth. Steve's tired eyes followed him, letting the motion ground him and help him fight down the emotion. "I don't like owing people. It's not my thing. Never has been." Back and forth. "People owe me." Back and forth.

Tony suddenly stopped, his hands twitching at his side. "But I've realized something.

"I owe you." Tony didn't resume his pacing, just stared at Steve. "I owe you everything. I owe you the past several months of mental stability. And I-" Tony broke off, suddenly, and the pacing began again. It was slower this time, more tense. Something about it made Steve hurt inside. He looked away.

After a few moments, Tony ambled his way back to the chair beside the bed and collapsed back into it. When he spoke again, his voice was different. "I can't lose that. So when I watched you bleeding out underneath me, I felt, um."

Tony stopped.

Started again.

"When I was taking that nuke into the wormhole, I tried to call Pepper, you know? I tried to tell her my goodbyes, give her my last words. But she, um, she didn't answer. I couldn't...I couldn't leave it like that." Tony's voice was beginning to sound clogged. "I'm not good at leaving things unresolved. I'm no good at owing people, you know?

"But you wouldn't stop bleeding, Jesus, it wouldn't stop. And I still...I still owed you. I couldn't, God, I couldn't watch you die." Tony leaned forward, putting his elbows on the bed and his face in his hands, like he was trying to get Steve not to see him. His voice jumped a few octaves. "You were... in and out." His words began to spread themselves farther apart, like there wasn't enough air to sustain them. "Those three minutes felt like hours when you were...when you were gone. I never knew… which time...would be the last, you know? I didn't know when the end would be. I didn't know...I couldn't tell... oh fuck, Steve." Steve lifted a hand and touched Tony's wrist, "I'm not panicking, okay? I'm fine, it's fine. I'm not panicking." He said, but his voice trembled, and his chest was heaving for air. "But, anyway, I still...I still owed you. And you were...slipping away. I couldn't watch that. I couldn't stay. I couldn't….I put too much stock in having you, okay? I relied too much on you, especially knowing what I know now. But, but, I couldn't take everything that happened back. I still owed you. But I couldn't watch." His voice broke, and when he spoke again it came out as a breathy whisper. "I couldn't stay with you. I had to...I had to get out of there. And the past couple days, I couldn't be here, you know? It was...it was too much. There's too much. And there's a lot that..." Steve tapped twice on Tony's wrist. "Fuck, Steve. I'm not panicking. I'm trying to just explain myself and," Tony picked his head up from his hands, "and it's just...not going so well." Tony squinted at him. "Stop giving me that look you concerned asshole and let me comfort you."

Steve almost smiled at that, but in the end did not move, neither changing his expression nor removing his fingertips from where they rested against Tony's wrist.

"Anyway, um," Tony wiped a hand down his face, "here's the deal. You are probably one of the most emotionally unhealthy people I've ever met. And I've met myself, so that's saying something." He visibly swallowed, taking a trembling breath. "And this whole...ordeal has made me realize how much I owe you, how much of a friend you've been to me. So I'm going to repay the favor."

Steve stopped.

_Repay the favor. _

He thought of watching Bucky fall. He thought of watching his best friend become smaller and smaller as gravity hurdled Bucky away from him.

Steve let his hand drop away from Tony's wrist.

"You're not coping, Steve. You're not adapting." Steve looked away. "And I've been there before. It seems so much easier to pretend the pain isn't there than to deal with it. It seems so much nicer to just pack it away. But that only festers when it's like that. Trust me, whether it's alcohol or heroism sacrifice or whatever you choose to drown out the pain, that doesn't make it goes away."

Steve closed his eyes.

He thought of New Year's Eve, doing paperwork alone, missing his life with every cell in his body.

"You need to mourn." Tony said, and then Steve was squeezing his eyes shut, pressing his mouth together. "You can't live like this. Your whole life can't be the past versus the present, Steve. And I get it. The past is the past. But just because it's in the past doesn't mean it's gone, okay? You can't think like that. You can't think that something that happened back then is gone forever. Because it's not."

But what if it was? If it wasn't gone then where was it?

_What does this moment mean?_

He thought of Margaret Carter, and the SSR files he couldn't bring himself to look through. He thought of loving her, of wanting her. Of losing her.

"Hiding from your problems doesn't mean they won't find you. They'll always be there. The question is only how you'll deal with them." Tony said. "Steve? You need to accept what happened to you. The only way to make it hurt less is to accept it. White-knuckling these feelings only brings them closer to you. You need to let go. For yourself. And for them."

He thought of Tony Stark, looking at him like Captain America held up the whole world. He thought of that waitress who gushed to the news about how Captain America saved her life. He thought about the therapist who asked him how he felt about the situation, and the terrible, sinking feeling of the knowledge that whatever he would say wouldn't matter.

_You need to let go._

The sound ripped from him. "What if I can't?" He said, his voice gruff from underuse.

"What makes you think you can't? You're not alone in this. You have us, Steve. I've been trying to tell you that for months now. You're not alone." A hand landed on his forearm. "Steve?"

"Yeah?" He whispered.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes." He whispered, his voice even gruffer and softer.

"Look at me." He said, and reluctantly, Steve turned his head and opened his eyes, conscious that everything he was thinking was splayed across his face, conscious that his eyes were shimmering. Tony's hand tightened on his forearm as he said, "We're going to get you out of here, and then we're going to spend a week watching war documentaries and reading SSR files." He thought of sitting in the decimated bar that his friends had once enjoyed themselves in, while finding out that he could never get drunk. "And it's going to be really hard, okay?" He thought of the way the ceiling looked when he first opened his eyes. He thought of the way Times Square still made him feel sick inside. "I know it's going to be hard." He thought about waking up with names on his lips, of daydreams that felt like nightmares. "But you don't have to pretend anymore. I know that it hurts. I know that you feel like you're not allowed." He thought of the way he felt after the Battle of New York, the shawarma that tasted like sand in his mouth, the difficulty of only living a world for a month before having to save it.

He thought of pushing on the cowl and pasting on a smile and pretending he was _okay_.

He couldn't do it anymore.

They all knew, anyway.

"But despite what you feel, and despite what you've seen, you'll always be Steve Rogers first." Steve nodded, shaking loose the first tear. It spun a hot line down his cheek. The words clipped something inside him, and suddenly Steve felt ten years old again. Small and sick and young. "And you're going to mourn, okay?" Tony said. "Let go, Steve. Just let go."

He did.

Steve closed his eyes, and he let go.

It was easy.

He brought it all to the surface; his own life, his death, and this second life that he was trying to live. As he felt the pain of it, he allowed himself to feel it. His throat hurt, and his arm hurt, and his head heart, but, in the end, that never would compare to the hurt he carried inside.

Because he'd always thought that a moment can only be lived once.

And then it can only be mourned.

Or maybe Tony was right, and maybe the only way to get through this was to keep the moments with him, to hate them and love them and carry them with him. Maybe the only way that he would feel alright again was if he, for once in his life, let himself feel small. If he kept his past with him, no matter how much it hurt.

Maybe Tony was right, and maybe Tony was wrong, but Steve's idea of dealing with things hadn't exactly worked out, anyway.

Somewhere, in between the tears leaking down his face, and the throbbing in his neck, he registered Tony's hand drifting from his forearm and Tony taking in several deep breaths. As if Tony had suddenly noticed the wounded soldier and the broken man were the only two in the room, he said. "Well, we're just the perfect pair, aren't we?" Tony managed, his words breathy and slow.

Steve only managed, "I wouldn't...call it that."

Tony chuckled and his hand landed back on his forearm, warm and strong and _there_. Maybe that was the most remarkable thing about it, the very fact that it was _there_.

Steve was at his low point, and despite what he'd initially thought, they—his team—hadn't been scared away. They weren't initially there at first because it was an accident, a mistake.

Perhaps he wasn't as alone as he thought.

The two of them sat like that for a long while.

* * *

><p><strong>I just want to thank all of you lovely people for reviewing and reading and following and favoriting. You're all wonderful people, and I'm very very honored by it all. Again, I'm so sorry it's been taking me so long to post!<strong>

**Anyway, one more chapter!**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**sailorraven34: Thank you so much for both of your reviews! i appreciate your input a ton! :D**

**BT: I know, I know! I'm so sorry! My real life has exploded at the moment and that takes away a lot of creative energy. It's horrible, I hate it. Anyway, to answer your question, pretty much, yes, Steve reopened the wound. In this chapter Tony was referencing what happened when Steve woke up when Tony says, "You've already blown [the stitches] once." thank you for the review!**

**Huskygirl1998: Yes, yes he's has finally completely snapped. And yes they were pretty much dreams, if not hallucinations. **

**SolarRose29: Oh no, don't apologize! Don't feel obligated to review, seriously. It's great and I appreciate it a lot, though. Anyway, I'll respond to your points. 1) Fun fact about that part. I was in the car on the way to work when I thought of those words "it was satisfying." I was thinking about how great it was to just float through red lights, and of course, my mind immediately went to Steve rogers, because apparently I relate everything to him. 2) I feel like every Avenger just need their head-in-hand moment. They're all pretty emotionally bruised, and sometimes you just need to take a moment and breathe. 3) That line was almost edited out, but I figured it was lighten the mood of things, so what the heck. 4) I hit on that a little on that chapter, and that was a little bit of a dilemma for me to include. Tony is traditionally not that honest about his emotions, and he's not that great with the sappy corny motivational stuff in a lot of other fics, but I figured that desperate times call for desperate measures, even for Tony Stark. 5) If I could describe this fic in two words it would be IDENTITY CRISES. 6)Yes! You got exactly the point I was getting to right there :D**

**MP3: Alright, I'm going to go off on a tangent that you probably didn't ask for, but oh well. At first I was totally going to do a team fic, mostly because my favorite characters in the MCU always change. It started with Steve and then it went to Bruce and then Clint and then Natasha and then Thor and Tony and on and on and on and repeat. Anyway, as of right now, I'm so intrigued by theses two characters, and I'm not sure I want to quit with them yet. I might do more 5 plus ones, but as of right now I'm not sure. If anything, they'll either be one-shots or 5 plus ones. So, to answer your question, I'm still going to write Steve and Tony friendship. :D**

**ErinKenobi2893: thank you for the review! I'm glad that you understood/liked the in and out of consciousness parts. **

**Agent Ruby Red: thank you! That was the reaction that I was aiming for, so I'm glad that it could connect with you emotionally.**

**Beakers47: yeah, I've never killed off a fanfic character, and I'm not quite sure I know how. So you can expect them all to live :D**

**The Shadow Keeper: I think they're both beginning to realize just how much they need each other. Which is probably pretty weird for them, considering they used to hate one another. thanks for the review!**

**Tospringe: Yes, I admit I'm not a doctor and will never be one, and I know that his survival was probably a stretch, but we're just going to pretend that the serum can work miracles and, for the sake of fiction, Steve Rogers can survive a slit throat. :/ Also, the waking up alone thing was a big accident on the other avengers' parts.**

**Qweb: They are :(. Steve is just in a really bad place right now, I guess.**

**Iron Robin: I'm trying to tone down the angst and make it happier, as of now. So hopefully I won't break your feels too much in the next one! Thank you for reviewing!**

**TheVelvetRose 1120: I know. So much angst...anyway, thank you for the review!**


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: I want to credit all the wonderful beautiful reviews I've gotten as inspiration for the warm fuzzy feelings in this chapter.**

**Also, I know the real history timeline, but the way that the MCU fit itself into it is not known to me, so apologies if I get something wrong. I was operating under the assumption that Steve went down in early 1944, before the tide of the war really changed. **

* * *

><p>Steve woke from a deep and dreamless sleep to find Tony Stark staring at him.<p>

He started awake, memories of being asleep already forgotten. "Tony, what the hell?"

"You're the one that fell asleep in the living room." Tony said, and Steve blinked exhaustion from his eyes to look around. Sure enough, he had passed out on the couch, his feet kicked up on the end. Someone had given him a blanket. Tony was sitting in the couch across from him, still staring.

"Why are you _staring _at me?"

"I dunno. Wanted to see if it would wake you up." Tony shrugged.

"What? _Why_?" Steve sat up, rubbing weariness from his face.

"Because in about…" Tony checked his Rolex, "forty five seconds, Maura Evans from _Esquire _is going to be here to interview us."

"She...what?" Steve instantly thought of his ratty sweatpants and bedhead. "You told me that was tomorrow."

"Yeah. But there's this funny thing about the sun, when it goes down and comes up again it's a new day. You slept the whole night here, Spangles."

Steve, for a moment, was severely disoriented. Since when did he sleep on the couch in the common floor? Since when did he sleep through the whole night? The last thing he remembered was listening to Bruce and Tony play Connect Four in the kitchen as Bruce idly instructed Clint how to make some special dessert that Bruce had loved in Calcutta. Natasha had been on the floor next to the couch, flipping through an old book, while Thor was trying to give Tony idle pointers on how to win the game. Steve had been reading emails on a Stark tablet and then….

And then apparently he'd fallen asleep.

Before Steve could express any of this weirdness, the elevator dinged as it opened, and a professional woman clicked in on expensive heels. Her dark brown hair was fixed upward, and her arms were curled around a navy blue briefcase.

"Maura!" Tony stood up, dressed well in a pair of expensive black jeans and his favorite AC/DC shirts (the one without oil stains.) "Nice to see you again."

"Likewise, Tony." She smiled, clipped, and extended a hand, friendly but still professional. She turned to Steve, "Nice to meet you, Captain Rogers."

Steve opened his mouth, still dumbfounded, his legs still covered in Natasha's favorite quilt.

Tony jumped in. "Don't mind him, he just woke up."

Maura chuckled, "I can see that."

Steve recovered from his initial shock, "My apologies, Miss Evans, ma'am, um, Tony-"

"It's fine, Captain." She smiled at him as he carded fingers through his hair, trying to get it to lie straight. "I've seen worse." her eyes drifted to Tony. "Trust me."

Steve stood, shucking the blanket off, straightening his blue t-shirt and heathered gray sweatpants. He extended a hand to her, and then offered her a place to sit on the chair. She smiled and accepted, sitting easily, pulling out something to record the conversation. "Shall we get started?"

"Sure." Tony collapsed into the spot he was sitting in before, and pulled a mug half-full of coffee near to him. Steve shot him a look. How long had he been staring at him while he slept? God, this was already so weird.

"Alright, let's get right to it, then." She said, "I'm sure the two of you have seen the picture." She said, easily, not noticing that the two of them had stiffened.

She was referencing a picture that had been circulating through the press. After Steve had gotten out of the hospital, the rumors within the media were running rampant. Information had been kept a minimum about Steve's condition and what had happened, and things were rapidly spinning out of control. So, with the support of SHIELD, they'd called a press conference about three hours after Steve's release. He'd stood in front of a crowd and answered their questions with the scar still fading in the hollow of his throat. He'd been okay, still hurting and open and raw, but still able to pull out his persona of strength to face the public. But there had been one question, one simple question that had knocked the life out of him completely. A young reporter, near the back, had asked him, "There have been rumors that your recovery has been slower than it usually is. Can you confirm or deny this?" It was a normal question, nothing bad, but it got Steve thinking about what Tony had said, about how dragging out his emotional injuries had made them worse, how he needed to force himself to cope and to heal otherwise he never would. Tony, as if sensing this, had immediately put a hand on Steve's good shoulder and leaned over to speak into the microphones, "As always, kid, serum questions are confidential." He'd leaned back with a grin directed toward Steve, like this was natural, like it was normal. Like things were okay. After some lucky photographer had snapped the picture, that sucker had circulated worldwide. When Tony found it, he had dashed in socks to Steve's living room, where he had been eating soup painfully and watching something dumb on the television. "Look at this," he'd told Steve, holding it out. Steve had taken the tablet from him and looked at the picture. Steve was staring straight ahead, his face set, his eyes a watery blue, shadows cutting through his face. And next to him was Tony, smiling with his teeth, his eyes creased and brown and directed toward at Steve, his hand in a tight grip on Steve's shoulder. "Don't tell me we're not friends." Tony had joked as Steve handed the tablet back.

Maura continued, "You guys are probably the most vocal of the Avengers." Which was true; Bruce hated the attention, Clint and Natasha preferred to stay as anonymous as possible, and Thor didn't understand enough social norms to survive a press conference, so most the time it was Steve and Tony answering questions. Even back when they hated each other on principal, they'd both swallowed their pride for the good of the team. It had given the media a false sense that they were really good friends, but they preferred to keep it that way. People didn't need to know about their personal lives. They also didn't know that after killing bad guys, Steve and Tony were frequently close to killing each other. "How do you think your friendship has been affected by recent events?"

"Friendship?" Tony coughed.

Maura misread the incredulity, and rephrased her sentence, "Tony, you effectively saved Captain Rogers' life, is that correct?"

"Uh yeah, but I wouldn't-"

"Has the trauma of that affected the team at all?"

"I, um, maybe-"

"Of course it has," Steve cut in, giving Tony a knowing look before looking back at Maura. "I owe Tony my life." _In more ways than one_. "I've never...I've never been the one who got saved." He shrugged, "I've always done the saving. I think we've both realized a lot about ourselves through this whole thing."

"Could you elaborate?"

Steve settled back into the couch with a sigh, "When Tony was still...semi-conscious. They asked me, um, what would happen if he woke up to find me dead." Tony tossed an alarmed glance at Steve, and Maura leaned forward, intrigued by the subject. This was more open than he'd ever been in an interview. "I've never thought about it that way." He scratched his neck, "It's never been about that. At least, I never realized it was." Maura looked severely confused, but Tony's mouth had slightly popped open. "I was forced to look at life through the present, you know? To see all of life in just one moment. It was grounding."

Maura still looked confused, which probably meant that nothing that Steve had just said would make the final draft of the article. So he had said it more for his own benefit, and perhaps Tony's. Tony had told him that it was time to start thinking of his life in terms of the present, and not the past versus the present. That maybe he'd suffered a great loss in his life, but that didn't mean that he didn't have anything more to lose. Resilient and strong as Captain America was, he had built up a new reality around himself while still trying to get back to the old one. Maybe it would hurt for a while. Maybe it would be weeks and years and months until he was okay, but that didn't mean that he could never be okay.

And maybe he was doomed to live a life that would eventually drift away from him, but just because it had once didn't mean he should just let it happen again. He had more than he'd known. And maybe that was enough.

Maybe life is made of moments, but each moment bleeds together.

There is no beach without each individual grain of sand.

So, he would have to treat life as one entity, to let each experience shape him and mold him and make every other experience count. No matter how much it hurt, it would hurt more if he let parts of himself drift away. He'd learned that the hard way.

"Tony? What are your thoughts?"

Tony was still surprised at Steve. "You actually listened to me." he muttered at Steve.

"Pardon?" Maura asked.

"Um, I, er. Yeah. What he said. We've changed. I held his neck together for three minutes. He owes me an ice cream sandwich."

"I do?'

"The Neapolitan kind." Tony nodded.  
>"I didn't know you liked strawberry ice cream."<p>

"Um. _duh_. Who doesn't?" Tony raised his eyebrows at him.

"Literally everyone I've ever met."

"Then you should get out more, Cap." Tony responded, and the two of them looked away from one another, the banter dying away just as soon as it started.

"If I may ask, Captain, since you've been so honest so far," Maura said, jutting in, still oblivious to what was happening. "What do you think the moment was that changed things for you?"

He thought about it for a moment.

Perhaps it was lying in his own blood and tasting what death felt like and feeling fingers forcing him not to give up. Perhaps it was listening to Tony have a panic attack next to him, one that he could not help like he had all the ones before, simply because he had caused it.

Maybe it was listening to Clint and Tony slowly begin to raise their voices at one another because they had both been angry and scared and for Clint it was much easier to blame Tony than to do anything else. Maybe it was the way that Steve had to only hold up a hand and skewer them with a look before they stopped fighting, because they were only mad because they were scared and because they cared, and in the end, they would listen to him. Maybe it was the way that Bruce had sounded like the Hulk when the hospital tech had screwed something up. Maybe it was the way that Natasha held his hand when she thought he wasn't awake.

Perhaps it was none of those moments.

Perhaps it was all of them.

"The moment?" Steve said, and looked down at his hands, at his long, artistic fingers, clipped nails and callused palms. He looked back at her, importantly, feeling the lump grow in his throat. "I'm not sure I know what you mean by that."

* * *

><p>(It didn't take long for him to slip back into old habits.<p>

The trauma faded into the timeline, and Steve emerged from the other side a changed man, but it would take more to change him to the core.

And so he would roll out of bed from nightmares and clean the cold sweat from his brow and swallow the bile in his throat. He would wake in the morning and push his muscles in exercise and masquerade as okay when he wasn't. He would still try to pick up the scraps of his shattered life by himself.

The difference was, now they knew what it looked like when strength was manufactured. They knew him, now, knew him to the core, and they would no longer let him work through it alone.)

(On June 6th, there was a knock on his door and hesitant footsteps. "Steve?" It was Tony, timid, talking to his back. "Are you okay?"

Steve had a file open in his lap, Dum-Dum's, and was staring down at it. He'd been staring at it for a long time now, probably too long. His face was blank, his eyes unfocused. "I'm fine." He said. He couldn't get over it. Three letters, stamped into the file. Similar ones were on his own, he knew, but this was permanent. This was real.

KIA.

"What is it?" Tony continued as if Steve hadn't said anything.

Steve, lip curling, looked down at the file. Dugan had been relocated after Steve had crashed, placed in the fronts once Hydra had been taken down and the Commandos no longer had a job. He'd been sent North, to join the bulk of the allied forces.

He'd been killed in Operation Overlord.

The allies had invaded at Normandy on June 6th, 1944 and started the beginning of the end. Steve hadn't been there. Dum-Dum had.

"Tell me." Tony said from behind him.

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's D-Day." he replied.)

(Weeks later, they were coming off the back end of a mission, with an extraction set for the next day, and Clint suggested that they go incognito and go into town to the local bar. It was a small town, located in southern Poland, and Steve thought he almost remembered the name. He'd been trying to think of it ever since they'd gotten there, but he wasn't sure. He couldn't remember; not because his memory was bad, but because he had blocked it out.

It wasn't until they crossed a cobbled street with a distinct name that he remembered. Suddenly, he found his feet pressing into the uneven ground, his legs running underneath him. It was a gut reaction; an intense, desperate, terrified realization that led him down the street and had him skidding to a stop.

He stepped from the street and into history.

Bucky had looked at him. "This is a big one, Cap." He'd whispered.

Steve, uncomfortable and unhappy, glanced down at his SS uniform, the one lone streetlight glancing off the swastika. It made him feel dirty. "It better be." He didn't wear this uniform lightly. In fact, the moment he got it off he wanted to burn it.

"You ready?" Bucky had hesitated at the door. There were people inside, he could hear them.

"_Ja, mein freund_." Steve had responded, and Bucky had grumbled something about how good his German was before knocking on the door. He straightened his own uniform as they opened the door.

_"__Guten tag_." Bucky smiled, "_Heil Hydra._"

Now, voices from behind him brought him back to the present. They'd followed him here, noticing his absence. He was going to have to explain this to them and he didn't know how. He wasn't sure how to put this into words. Maybe he could tell them in German. Maybe he wouldn't tell them at all.

For him, it had only been a few years since he was here, a few years since there had been a building in this field and a Nazi flag waving on that streetlight over there. Now it was just grass, waving in the evening summer wind.

"What's going on? It's just a patch of grass?"

"No, Anthony. Look." Thor said.

"That plaque is in Polish, Thor." Clint replied, in his actually very familiar Not-All-Of-Us-Have-Allspeak voice of his.

"Oh. I had forgotten." Thor said. "It…."

"It says," Steve cut in, turning around. He'd done a similar motion before in the same spot, but it had been much quicker, and there had been people shooting at him. And Peggy had been waiting in the car. "That in late 1943 Buck and I were here. Hydra was making plans to expand, and we…" He broke off, looking at them watching him. The memory was hitting him full force, now, and he almost wished he had never recalled it. He remembered every detail, down to Peggy's scolding in the car. _You boys mucked this one up, I hope you realize that_. "I guess it doesn't matter, anymore." His feet stepped from the mushy grass and back onto the street. He pushed past them. "Let's just go back." Now that his back was toward the field, he could feel the heat of fire, almost like that building was still lit up to the sky in hot oranges and reds like it had been. The memory burned the same way.

"Steve, you're not getting out of this one that easily." Tony promised. "C'mon, buddy, tell us the story."

Steve swallowed. It suddenly hurt.

Bucky had messed up his German.

He'd sworn in English. He'd blown both of their covers, forcing Steve into a plan B, which involved both fire and theft.

They'd been hardly twenty-five years old, and running from a burning building with Hydra plans in their hands and the heat of fire at their backs, like they were in one of those moving picture action movies. They'd both been laughing and high on adrenaline when the building had exploded behind them. It was, in all actuality, quite terrifying, and later in the car Steve started swearing in the back, with Bucky with his head between his knees in the front as Peggy drove and simultaneously rubbed his back.

Now, Steve swore underneath his breath. "It was a long time ago." He said.

"Well, duh, Gramps. Doesn't mean we don't want to know about it." Tony fixed him with a look, which sort of reminded him of the way Tony had spoken to him when he was bleeding out on the floor. _If you die I'm literally going to murder you_. It was a fierce sort of caring, like Tony was going to force him to open up if it was the last thing he did.

Steve looked past them, toward the plaque, and recalled the memory.)

(After that, it got easier.

Not that his habits went away. On the contrary, his teammates more and more frequently found him in the gym at odd hours and forced him out of it, or asked him if he was okay until he either spilled what was on his mind or threw up his hands in frustration, saying, "I really am okay this time. Jeez."

It simply got easier to show them. It made the pretending hurt more. He realized he had another option, and as time passed, that alternative became more and more likeable.

He still felt small.

He still sometimes didn't feel adequate, like he wasn't enough, like the world wasn't enough for him.

But sometimes it felt better to mourn than to let his problems make him feel even smaller.

It was an uphill battle.)

* * *

><p>"That went well." Tony called from the kitchen, clinking together something that sounded glass.<p>

Steve shrugged. "If you want to call it that."

Tony emerged from the kitchen sporting a bottle of Johnnie Walker and one glass. "Evans is a good journalist. We'll get a kick-ass article out of that, trust me."

"If you say so." Steve allowed, casually watching Tony as he set the glass down and poured a healthy amount of scotch into it. "Isn't it a little early for that?"

"It's five o'clock somewhere." Tony only responded, which Steve wasn't sure he understood, but he didn't say anything else. Tony collapsed next to Steve on the couch, picking up the glass with one hand, and thrusting the half-full bottle to Steve's chest with the other.

"What's this for?"

Tony, uncharacteristically mysterious, only replied. "Experiment." He shifted on the couch, switched his tumbler into his right hand, and then tipped it toward Steve. "To alcoholism." Tony said, raising his tumbler up.

"I am not toasting to that." Steve said.

"This coming from the guy with the whole bottle." Tony quipped. "C'mon Spangles. If we're either fighting or drinking, I'd much rather choose drinking." He sighed, and Steve caught what he was saying. _I'm tired of this. _

Steve looked at Tony dubiously, and then leaned forward and set the bottle down. "Tony-" he started.

"Oh no. I sense a lecture. Doesn't scotch keep that kind of thing away? I thought we agreed no fighting while we drink." Again, his words were tired. They were both tired. It was exhausting, all of it.

Steve just sighed and looked at the bottle. "I'm not going to lecture you."

"Then why do you have that face on?"

"I just…" Steve was still looking at the bottle. "Aren't we a bit past that?"

"What do you mean?"

"That you've, um, what was it? 'formed an attachment' and I can 'never leave.'" Steve replied openly. In the corner of his eyes, he saw the color drain from Tony's face.

"I didn't think you'd remember that." He muttered, and Steve leaned forward to grab the bottle. "I didn't know you could hear me." Steve hid his smile behind the lid of the bottle as he downed a sip. "I…" Tony was full on looking at him, and Steve couldn't hide it for long. "Are you laughing at me?"

"No." He said evenly.

"You're a little shit, you know that?" Tony said.

He hadn't been called that for a long time. "I have no idea what you're talking about." He replied, thinking of Bucky. In the moments before the inevitable hurt came, the smile stayed on his face. The memories of him, at their core, were happy. Maybe that was what he should hold on to. Maybe he should remember the way Bucky called him _punk _when his humor came out, how Bucky used to drop his face into a glare and threaten to kill him.

"I hate you a little bit." Tony continued, speaking into his drink with a roll of his eyes.

Steve, smile fading, the sting of the memory biting harder, responded. "Thanks, Tony." He said, knowing they were both well-past the hate. They had been through too much. It was too much effort to hate one another now. So, for now, he was looking at the alcohol, for once not wishing to get drunk, but perhaps only to remember enough to forget the pain, to forget the bad things, and only find the good. "You too."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I've been staring at this chapter for like an hour debating whether or not to post it. I'm not 100% happy with this ending, but that's probably because mostly I don't ever want to finish this fic, but the time must come! Anyway, I want to thank all of you guys for your support, because it truly means a lot to me. <strong>

**My next fic will be significantly shorter, and called _Unfounded. _The description, as of right now, will be "Tony knows what desperation looks like, and Steve is acting his age for the first time this century. Post CA:TWS" So, if you have any interest, keep an eye out for that one, which is coming up. **

**Adieu!**

**~Migs**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**Anon: OMg I am so sorry that I originally forgot to respond to you! I read the review at about five thrity in the morning, right when I woke up, and forgot to moderate it! Anyway, what you said was so sweet and kind so thank you very much for it! I'm so honored by your words! Thank you!**

**BT: Thank you! I didn't want to make Tony overly-emotional, because he's pretty stoic himself, but I feel like he connects with Steve on a personal level, so that makes the things that happened mean that much more to him. **

**ErinKenobi2893: Thanks for that! And I actually did some research into the medical process and stuff of slitting throats. (yes, the reference to Reddit two chapters ago was no coincidence. I was just being self-aware. Whoops) And I might have stretched the truth a bit, but I did it for fiction, which, I guess, is a pretty noble cause. :D thank you so much!**

**MP3: Steve Rogers just needs a hug. Always. Thank you!**

**Mari Knickerbocker: thank you thank you thank you! It definitely is hard to remember that he's supposed to be so young. I think having a difficult life such as Steve's ages you, you know? Pain can take a lot of things away from people, including perception of time and maturity.**

**SolarRose29: :D OMg I'm in love with that song. It's been on repeat for a really long time now, so I probably should quit listening to it for a bit. 1) I guess what I set up here was too monumental for only one person to help heal. I think, as always, it had to be a team effort. Anything less would fall flat, for Steve. 2) It was more a heat of the moment anger, to outline the scene and what was happening, to show that Clint cared about Steve, enough so to want to defend him and be mad enough at Tony only because it didn't seem like Tony was defending Steve, as well. But Tony was just taking the time to process and gather himself and figure out what to do. He got scared off, he came back. It's the second part that matters. 3) Thank you :) 4) Numbers and science are the thing in Tony's life that he could rely on since he was born. It's a sad thing, but it's a comfort to Tony in any situation. 5) In chapter two, I used the phrase "...speaking around a slit throat." And then I was sorta cackling to myself because it was foreshadowing and imagery all at once and it me feel creative for a hot second. I don't know the point of that anecdote, but oh well. Now you know. 6) Okay, let me walk you through my reactions to when I get reviews: I get the email and see it's a review, and get excited, and then instantly I'm terrified it's going to be horrible and mean. I open the email and read it and generally (especially when it's you)end up smiling like a darn fool and laughing to myself and feeling generally awesomer than i actually am. And then when i reread them to respond to them that feeling never goes away. So I want to thank you for that comment, because you're awesome and it was awesome and probably more than I deserve. So thank you. 7)Sometimes the things we do are only made complicated because they seem complicated. Humans tend to make life scarier than it actually is. 8) Again, thanks. I'm not sure how I brought myself to not-so-subtly tackling the meaning of life, but I somehow got there. Perhaps I should plan my fics better.**

**SilentSoldiers; Thank you! I'm glad that it seems that I've made the characters seem realistic, because that has definitely been a struggle. **

**TheSingingSky: Aww thanks! Thank you so much :D**

**Beakers47: Thank you! I'm glad you liked tony's monologue. That was something I was unsure of.**

**Iron Robin: They are SO similar. It's almost terrifying, really. Especially because outwardly they seem like they couldn't be more different, but when you really think about it they're sorta like...different shaped buildings built with the same bricks. Does that make sense? Not really. Oh well. THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG**

**HawkeyeLover: WRITING IS SO HARD. FOR EVERYONE. Don't let anyone tell you it's easy, because they are dirty rotten liars if they do. Just twenty minutes ago I was editing this and I got so frustrated with it I had to switch to Spanish and watch a movie about cocaine cartels in Columbia. I got so frustrated in English that I couldn't even _think _in the language anymore. So keep practicing! Anyway, thank you so much! **

**The Shadow Keeper: Thank you! I'm very glad you liked Tony in that chapter. I wasn't quite sure that I portrayed him right. But thanks!**

**Qweb: I'm very touched that you said that, and it makes me quite happy. So thank you so much!**

**TheVelvetRose 1120: I know, there was so much angst, right? I think my next challenge to overcome will be subtlety. To tone down the angst but still have the feels. That's probably my biggest problem. Anyway, thank you so much for your enthusiasm. **


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